Despite skipper Sanju Samson’s 86, the Rajasthan Royals fell short by 20 runs against the Delhi Capitals in their 11th match of the season on Tuesday. Chasing 222, Rajasthan lost both their openers in the powerplay but Samson kept the hopes of a win alive before he was dismissed by Mukesh Kumar.Jake Fraser-McGurk and Abhishek Porel scored fifties as the Delhi Capitals posted 221/8 in their 20 overs against the Rajasthan Royals. Ravichandran Ashwin was the pick of the bowlers with three wickets off his four overs. Yuzvendra Chahal became the first Indian to snap 350 T20 wickets as he removed Rishabh Pant.
Kuldeep Yadav, Player of the Match, said It is very important to bowl on a good length and that’s the main challenge when I bowl in the death overs. I have played against him (Ferreira) in South Africa and I knew he was a back foot player and wanted to stay a little full and quick and got him out first ball. I bowled a couple of seam-up deliveries to read what the batters are doing. Just the length matters for me and that was the plan. Whenever we score 200-plus obviously lot of pressure on the bowler and it is also an opportunity to take wickets and I was trying to back my strengths and keep believing.
Rishabh Pant, DC skipper, said, The way our bowlers executed at the back end was the main positive and it was really good to see. We will try to learn from every game. Even when we lose or win, we will keep our head down and keep moving forward. As always Kuldeep delivered which was great to see. It was close to par and at the same time we were thinking that if we can restrict them to 200 that would be fair and that was the thought process.
Sanju Samson, RR skipper, said, I think we had it in our hands, it was like 11-12 runs per over, it was achievable, but these things happen in IPL. Yes, we are doing both the things fine, we will like to stick to what the conditions demand, 220 was 10 runs extra to chase, if we had conceded a couple of less boundaries, we would have made it through. The DC opener (Fraser McGurk) came out and did what he has done through the tournament, we still came back well. We have lost three games but all those games have been really tight, we have been playing remarkably well, we have to do some fine-tuning and make a comeback, we need to keep the momentum going. Yes and No actually, you have to give credit to someone like Stubbs who batted well against Sandeep, who has been bowling very well in the last 10-11 games, he scored 2-3 sixes extra against my best bowlers who are Yuzi Chahal and Sandeep Sharma. We have lost the game, we have to find out where we lost the game and we need to keep moving.