At Arun Jaitley Stadium on Wednesday, the Delhi Capitals beat the Gujarat Titans by a margin of four runs thanks to a stunning 88 from Rishabh Pant. Axar Patel (66 off 43 balls) and Pant (88 not out of 43 balls), who were invited to bat, hit fifties to lead Delhi Capitals to 224 for 4. In response, GT finished at 220 for 8 in their 20 overs despite Sai Sudarshan (65 off 29) and David Miller (55 off 23). Earlier, Axar and Pant stitched a 113-run partnership to steady the innings after medium pacer Sandeep Warrier (3/15) ran through the top three.With eight maximums and five fours, Skipper Pant was in his element. Tristan Stubbs blazed away to 26 off 7 balls.
After the Gujarat Titans won the toss and elected to bat first, the Delhi Capitals got off to a terrible start. DC were 44/3 inside the powerplay with the loss of wickets of Jake Fraser-McGurk, Prithvi Shaw and Shai Hope, who was picked up in place of David Warner.
After the Gujarat Titans won the toss and elected to bat first, the Delhi Capitals got off to a terrible start. DC was 44/3 inside the powerplay after losing wickets of Shai Hope, who had been brought on in place of David Warner, Prithvi Shaw, and Jake Fraser-McGurk. Sandeep Warrier, who just made his IPL debut for GT, destroyed DC’s batting order and claimed all three wickets. The recently-formal Fraser-McGurk was out for just 23 runs. Shaw walked back after making just 11 runs. Shai Hope was out for just five runs, therefore he was also unable to contribute much.
With a brilliant cameo from Tristan Stubbs and an explosive innings of 88 runs from Rishabh Pant, DC scored a massive 224 runs. GT responded by losing their skipper Shubman Gill easily, which led to early problems. Only six runs were scored by the GT captain in his milestone 100th IPL game. Interestingly, Wriddhiman Saha and Sai Sudharshan dominate the run chase.
The match went down the wire and Rishabh Pant’s confidence in Mukesh Kumar paid off as Delhi Capitals defeated Gujarat Titans by four runs in match 40 of Tata IPL 2024 tonight. GT needed 19 runs in the last over. It appeared very manageable with Rashid Khan on the attack. GT needed 11 runs on the final two balls. It came down to the final ball, which was smashed by Khan for a maximum. However, it wasn’t the six as GT would have planned, Kumar’s final delivery sealed the deal for DC.
Post match Gill said, “I think we played some really good cricket, disappointing to lose in the end, but great character shown by everyone. Great fight till the end and we never thought we were out of the game at any point.”
When questioned about the team’s strategy for the chase, Gill made a clear point that in such case there is no point making a set plan. “When you’re chasing 224, there’s no point in talking about plans, just go out and score runs.
I think the impact player has a bit of a role (in making the matches high-scoring), even if you lose extra wickets, the extra cushion is there for the batters to keep going and it gives the license for the batters to keep going till the end,” he added.
The GT captain did acknowledge that they gave up a few extra runs in the last overs, though. He added “At one stage, we thought we would be able to restrict them to 200-210, but we gave away some extra runs in the last 2-3 overs. But this is a small ground, we spoke about the same when we went out to chase. Execution becomes very important, if there’s a set batter or a finisher, you’ll have to execute well. It’s okay if there’s something in the wicket, but on pitches like this, you’ll have to make sure that you execute all your plans perfectly, be it the yorkers or the variations.”
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