Wednesday 27 April 2011

Teach them how to defend

Though the total of 160 put up by the Delhi Daredevils yesterday against the Royal Challengers Bangalore at once again Delhi is not a decent total, it should not even be considered a cake walk for any tough opponent whatsoever. Had the same total been piled up by the Delhi team in one of the previous three editions, then that total would have seen them emerge victorious towards the end of the game i most encounters. Once again, the home team is found to be at the receiving end of the opposition's egos. I wish the Delhi team should stop playing on home turf.

A couple of days back, the Chennai Superkings were found defending a mere total of 142 on the board against Pune Warriors which was a game one of its kind for all those who have been following the tournament at least in this edition. The presence of Sehwag, Warner, James Hopes etc should provide a strong platform for the batting line up of the Delhi Daredevils whatsoever. But, what is seen happening is exactly reverse of the same. It has been the batsmen who have been responsible for their debacle. The bowlers, who get little support from the batsmen can do only this much.

Starting with the scorecard of the Delhi daredevils, it was a decent job done in by the batsmen that included Virender Sehwag, James Hopes and Venugopal Rao who showed confidence with the bat. Some decent tags include a quickfire 13 and 16 from Irfan Pathan and Naman Ojha respectively. Had they been out giving thus a chance to the forthcoming batsmen, that would not have added to the score in any way with Morkel and Umesh Yadav knowing their limits themselves. This was a tough match for Delhi to lose when all odds were for them. They had no reasons to lose absolutely.

However, it was one man that took the game away from the Delhi Daredevils when Virat Kohli turned the heat back at Delhi when he scored 56 runs from 38 deliveries which proved to be the backbone of their successful run chase. If not for that score, no other individual score from the Royal Challengers Bangalore seems to hit the headlines. Of course, Chris Gayle blasted a quickfire a 26 run from 14 balls at a strike rate of 185.0 which provided the platform for the run chase which eventually happened to be a close encounter. I wish Sehwag should have given one more over to Pathan which could have stopped tongues from wagging.

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