In a victory which has done nothing to improve its standing on the points table, the Delhi Daredevils (DD) scored a surprise victory over the fancied Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in the penultimate league match for both the teams played last night at Delhi’s Feroze Shah Kotla stadium.

CSK was expected to put it easily across DD, which has become the first team to be knocked out of the tournament as besides CSK and SRH, all the other five teams in the fray (besides DD) have the mathematical probability of making it to the play-off stages by getting the third and fourth positions on the points-table.

Winning the toss, CSK opted to bowl and it did very well to contain DD to restrict the home-team to a pathetic 97/5 in 14.4 overs.  What followed later during the remaining 5.2 overs and in particular the last over bowled by a increasingly off-colour Dwayne Bravo, DD amassed 65 runs to give its final score some degree of respectability and competitive edge.  All-rounders Vijay Shankar and Harshal Patel combined to wreak havoc by scoring all these runs in ‘death overs’ and made 36 apiece.
 
Bravo’s last over cost 26 runs to CSK (including four sixes) which swelled DD’s till them below-par score of 136 to 162.  Bravo’s slower-balls, one of his very potent weapons during the ‘death’ overs, haven’t been as effective as they used to be till 2015.  CSK missed playing the tourney in 2016 and 2017 and on their return, they have found it to their horror that Bravo is not as he was to confidently bowl during those death/final overs.

This is the reason CSK is trying out the likes of Ngidi, Chahar and Shardul Thakur as a probable alternative, it now seems.  CSK missed a trick yesterday by sticking to Bravo to bowl the last over while Ngidi, who had taken 2 wickets and had conceded just 14 runs in his 3 overs, was made to watch as Bravo bowled the match-turning final over and ended up conceding 52 runs in his quota of four overs.  It’s a huge mystery indeed as to why Dhoni didn’t prefer Ngidi to bowl the last over.

The wicked looked sluggish for most part of the match as the ball didn’t come to the bat and stroke-matchers struggled to put bat to the ball.  Dhoni, the greatest finisher in ODIs and T20s, was among those who struggled along with Ravindra Jadega to score an improbable 55 runs off the last three overs.  Jadeja did some big-hitting but it wasn’t enough.  In the hindsight, Rayudu getting out after scoring 50 and Bravi’s last over had certainly cost the match for CSK.

Earlier, DD didn’t do very well till the 20th over when Harshal Patel took a liking to Bravo’s bowling and smote him to four sixers.  Rishabh Pant continued his rich vein of form by scoring a blistering 38 off 25 balls.  Chahar, Thakur and Jadeja bowled well; in another mysterious decision (by Dhoni), frontline bowler Chahar bowled only three overs like Nigidi.

Harshal Patel was adjudged the ‘Man of the Match’ for his 16-ball 36 with a four and four sixes and bowling well by conceding just 23 runs in his four overs besides taking a wicket.

Brief scores: DD: 162/5 in 20 overs (Rishabh Pant 38, Vijay Shankar 36*, Harshal Patel 36*, Ngidi 2-14) beat CSK 128/6 in 20 overs (Rayudu 50, Dhoni 17, Jadeja 27*, Boult 2-20, Mishra 2-20) by 34 runs.