By BV Swagath
Delhi Daredevils eased to a 7-wicket with 13 balls to spare over defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders at Raipur. Kolkata Knight Riders put in yet another dismal show with the bat to crash to their seventh defeat in 10 matches.
Batting first after winning the toss, KKR were off to a shock start with Skipper Gautam Gambhir run out for a duck without facing a ball. The in-form Manvinder Bisla was cleaned up by Umesh Yadav followed up by Yusuf Pathan’s slog getting nicely caught by his brother Irfan at mid wicket. KKR went onto lose their finisher Eoin Morgan and Jacques Kallis in succession to slip to a disastrous 50 for 5 in 8.3 overs.
Delhi Daredevils somehow couldn’t do the finishing job and KKR managed to stretch their total to 136 for 7 thanks to Sumit Narwal’s 23 (from 15 balls) and Brett Lee’s 16* (from 6 balls). For Delhi, Irfan Pathan had a good evening with figures of 4-0-16-1.
Hosts Delhi were in early trouble losing Sehwag and Jayawardene inside the powerplay. At 27 for 2 in 4.1 overs, Delhi were on the backfoot but the pair of David Warner and Unmukt Chand steadied the ship. Unmukt scored 37 from 39 balls with 4 fours while David Warner finished the match with an unbeaten 66 from 42 balls with 6 fours and 3 sixes.
Toss and Teams: Kolkata Knight Riders have won the toss and elected to bat first against hosts Delhi Daredevils at the Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Stadium in Raipur. Brett Lee comes back for KKR after a long time and takes the place of Brendon McCullum.
Delhi Daredevils: Mahela Jayawardene (C), Virender Sehwag, Unmukt Chand, David Warner, Ben Rohrer, Kedar Jadhav (WK), Irfan Pathan, Shahbaz Nadeem, Morne Morkel, Ashish Nehra, Umesh Yadav
Kolkata Knight Riders: Manvinder Bisla (WK), Gautam Gambhir (C), Jacques Kallis, Eoin Morgan, Yusuf Pathan, Debabrata Das, Rajat Bhatia, Sunil Narine, Sumit Narwal, Brett Lee, Lakshmipathy Balaji
