Rain made its first real appearance in IPL 2018 and in a way dug a deep hole for DD who were provided with the difficult task of chasing down 71 in 6 overs.
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Gautam Gambhir had won the toss and as had been the norm in the tournament so far, he put the opposition into bat. And why wouldn’t he, as all 5 games until this match had been won by the team batting second.
The match was on an even keel when rain came down at 153-5 in 17.5 overs, however, with DLS forced to make its presence felt, the match up got a little tricky for the Delhi franchise, as they were handed a target of 71 in 6 overs.
With 10 wickets in hand and the kind of ammunition that they had in the dugout, Delhi would have fancied themselves to chase the total down. However, Munro got run-out without playing a ball and Maxwell still looked in ‘wedding mood’.
Pant did hit a few mighty blows but he couldn’t deliver when it really mattered.
Gambhir obviously touched upon the DLS and it ruined the chase for Delhi, who were essentially given the herculean task of scoring at 12 runs an over right from the onset.
“We were very much in the game. It was a beautiful wicket to bat on, then 150 for 5 in 18 overs, we thought we could contain them to 170 and it was chaseable, especially with dew coming in later on. We were very much happy with the first innings. But then 6 overs, 72 was tough. We had to go from ball one. Obviously with these sort of games, things could go either way. Just 2 overs of Powerplay, it’s very difficult. If it was a 20-over game, it would’ve been much easy to chase.” said Gambhir, as reported by Cricbuzz.
Delhi will want to put this loss behind them and look to get some momentum going for themselves from the next game on. Rajasthan on the other hand would be ecstatic with their win and will want to make Jaipur their fortress once again.
