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Follow Us“Five wickets down, did you feel, ‘Oh here we go again?’”, asked Murali Kartik in the post-match presentation.
“Yes!”, replied a tired David Warner, the Delhi Capitals’ skipper.
It was 1 vs 10 on the points table. At the start of the game, Gujarat Titans held a 72% chance of a victory on the Criclytics meter. It was quite high given the first ball was yet to be bowled. Anyone can beat anyone on their day in T20 cricket. Yet, you cannot blame Criclytics for its assessment.
Check out the full Criclytics Match Reel here
Delhi is a team that has snatched a defeat from the jaws of victory. On the other hand, Gujarat has built the reputation of winning games from anywhere in their brief history in the league.
Add to it Delhi’s ill-batting fortunes. They have lost wickets in clumps quicker than Rahul Tewatia hits sixes. They are at the bottom of nearly every batting metric in the season, let alone their numbers against pace and in the powerplay. On the contrary, Gujarat have been lethal with the ball in home conditions.
It is an anomaly but Delhi reeling at 23/5 in five overs, mainly to Mohammed Shami’s swing, was one of the more believable aspects of this fixture.
From thereon, Delhi registered only the second instance of a side winning an IPL game after losing five wickets or more inside the powerplay. The only other instance is when RCB notched up their target of 159 after being 29/5 in 2016. Then, it required an iconic knock from the superhuman of IPL, AB de Villiers. Here, Delhi were left with only Axar Patel, Ripal Patel and Aman Hakim Khan in their batting resources.
Axar has been Delhi’s best batter but had too much to do. Ripal and Aman didn’t have a half-century in any format.
The question arises: How did Delhi manage to pull off this heist?
To begin with, Aman broke the duck in the fifties column of his batting stats. The right-handed batter was deemed ultra-impressive by coach Ricky Ponting ahead of the season. After averaging only 6.8 in the season, the 26-year-old vindicated Ponting’s words to some extent. He first absorbed the pressure and then took charge.
To put context, at the end of the powerplay, Delhi’s chances were lingering at 12%. Axar and Aman had batted only six balls between them at this point. When Axar got out in the 14th over, after a 50-run stand with Aman off 50 balls, Delhi’s chances were still exactly 12%.
The partnership had Delhi breathing but they were far from rising in the game. Aman then added 53 runs off only 27 deliveries for the seventh wicket with Ripal, with the Mumbaikar contributing 30 off 16 balls in this stand.
Thanks to this partnership, Delhi scored 52 runs in the final five overs. There was a four and a six from Aman in the 16th over. Three boundaries between both batters in the 17th and a six each in the two subsequent overs. Delhi’s chances rose from 12% to 20%, improving gradually every over.
However, a great last over from Mohit Sharma kept Delhi at 15% at the mid-innings break.
Delhi had done well to finish 130/8 from 23/5. Axar, Aman and Ripal added 100 runs between them. But it was definitely not enough on this pitch for this Gujarat batting line-up which had Rashid Khan at number eight. A walk in the park was on the cards for the home side.
Khaleel then kicked off Delhi’s defense with a wicket-maiden over. In IPL since last season, Saha has nearly 56% of the runs on the on-side. Khaleel kept the ball wide of Saha, ultimately knicking him off behind the wickets on the last ball of his first over. Delhi’s chances doubled, rising from 15% to 31%.
Shubman Gill found the cover fielder on a full-length ball from Anrich Nortje in the fourth over. That wicket made Delhi favorites for the first time in the game - a win percentage of 52%.
Ishant Sharma delivered one of the best balls of the tournament - a knuckle ball to clean up Vijay Shankar. In one of the better new ball attacks, each of Nortje, Khaleel and Ishant struck once each. In the second innings powerplay, Delhi’s chances grew from 15% to 71%. It was the first occasion of the opposition picking three wickets against Gujarat at this venue in the first six overs.
Delhi have the best bowling economy for spinners this season. Axar and Kuldeep Yadav picked only one wicket among them but allowed Gujarat only 39 runs in the eight overs. The pressure of wickets worked like a charm as Abhinav Manohar and Hardik Pandya added 62 off 63 balls without any rhythm.
When Manohar departed on the first ball of the 18th over, Gujarat’s chances plummeted to 8%, their lowest in the match at any point.
Pandya wanted to take the game deep but couldn’t find any tempo. This knock (unbeaten 59 off 53 balls) has the lowest false shot percentage (7.5%) among his 10 IPL fifties but also has the third-lowest boundary percentage (47.4%).
Needing 30 off nine balls, Gujarat’s chances wobbled at only 1%. Rahul Tewatia’s first six took it to 4%, second to 6% and third to 19%. At this moment, a tie had a 7% chance and Delhi stood at 74%.
Ishant Sharma last bowled the 20th over in a T20 game in 2016. He had not bowled a single over at the death this season. There he was Delhi’s only hope to defend 12 in the final over as the side played with only five bowling options.
But after a knuckle ball that bewitched Dale Steyn, Ishant was ready with another surprise. He delivered the perfect last over - bowling four yorkers. The back of a length was pristinely timed. Tewatia was expecting another yorker when Ishant pulled the length back. The left-hander spliced it to Warner in the cover region.
19% ➡️ 13% ➡️ 3% ➡️ 2% ➡️ 0% - Gujarat’s chances dipped ball by ball in that sensational last over from the 34-year-old.
Not to forget, Delhi also fielded brilliantly, diving around for every run. Rilee Rossouw’s biggest contribution in the game was probably a full-stretched one-handed stop on the penultimate ball than the two boundaries he scored with the bat.
In only the previous game, Bangalore defended 126 against Lucknow. However, this was a bigger effort from Delhi given lesser assistance for bowlers on this pitch.
“The wicket (the pitch) was good enough. I think it was the wicket pressure. They bowled really well,” assessed Pandya after the game.
Delhi have now defended two sub-par totals in a row while bowling second. It is probably too late in the tournament, but the Warner-led side might have found their mojo - bat first and no matter how poorly you do that, the bowlers will know exactly how many runs they have in the bank.
On the positive side, this aligns with the ‘bat first’ trend which is growing during the second half of IPL 2023.
