5 min readApr 21, 2022 03:03 PM IST
First published on: Apr 20, 2022 at 11:10 PM IST
Plan’s well that works well
Delhi Capitals have two frontline spinners in their XI against Punjab Kings – Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav. But Axar brings the ball into the left-handers, and perhaps they didn’t want to risk Kuldeep in the Powerplay, or were saving him for later. So, when Punjab raced to 27 without loss in three overs, Rishabh Pant handed the ball to Lalit Yadav for some part-time off-spin to Shikhar Dhawan.
The plan seemed to be simple – Lalit darted it in full, in an attempt to take out the slog to the shorter leg-side boundary and make Dhawan hit to the longer rope on the offside. Dhawan did exactly that, moving inside the line to loft over mid-off for a couple of runs, although he didn’t quite time it. He bettered that effort, skipping out to now take one on the full and hit it for a straight four.
DC’s plan wasn’t working, and Lalit speared in a length ball headed down the legside. Dhawan decided to swivel and slap it past the wicketkeeper. If he had missed, it would have been a wide. And any decent connection would have got four, as fine leg was up. But all Dhawan managed was to feather it for Pant to take a sharp catch. The plan had worked, even if not in the way DC might have envisaged.
Livingstone found short
For a brief instant when he charged Axar Patel and wasn’t to the pitch of the ball, Liam Livingstone found himself in the exact position from where he reckons he hits his biggest sixes. “The time you hit the biggest sixes against spin is when your last thought is ‘you are not there, I am being done’. And you swing your hands through and if you connect, they go further than anything else,” he had once said on a demonstration of six-hitting on Sky Sports.
But of course, for that you have to connect. Axar had shortened the length and Livingstone was well short but still went for the big swing. However, the bat swished through well inside the line of the ball that turned and bounced into the gloves of Rishabh Pant. Livingstone was left stumped, in more ways than one.
Out of sync with inswing
Vaibhav Arora troubled Prithvi Shaw twice with his inswing, and once with the lack of it, in the opening over of the DC chase, but ended up conceding three fours. Shaw nearly had his stumps disturbed trying a booming drive to the first in-dipper, but an inside edge saved him, as the ball ran away past short fine. Arora bowled the next one wider, and Shaw had a go again, but couldn’t get bat to ball as it curled in under his bat. Shaw was third time wiser and offered a relatively straighter bat to the third inswinger.
He barely has a front-foot stride and while that leaves him vulnerable to getting bowled through the gate, it helped him flick the next delivery, much straighter this time, over midwicket for four. By now Shaw was expecting inswing every ball but the last delivery of the over didn’t; Shaw threw his bat somewhat inside the line, but fortunately for him, toe-ended it safely over cover for the third four.
Daddy, try harder
With his team under the Covid cloud, David Warner did everything an opener possibly can in a chase of 116. He put on a staggering 81 runs with opening partner Prithvi Shaw in the Powerplay, easily sealing the game during the field-restriction phase itself. Even as Shaw fell soon after, Warner made sure he stayed right till the end. He reached his half-century with a deliberately-delayed forcing slice off Nathan Ellis that raced past the wicketkeeper for four. He even hit the winning runs just after the halfway mark of the innings, pulling Rahul Chahar to the deep midwicket rope to finish on an unbeaten 60 off 30 deliveries. But after all this, he was still stumped by his children. “My kids just want to know why I cannot get hundreds like Jos (Buttler) does,” Warner said at the post-match presentation. One way could be to ask his bowlers to concede higher totals.
Delhi Capitals defeat Punjab Kings by 9 wickets (Photos by Ron Gaunt & Saikat Das / Sportzpics for IPL) 
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