Mehul Bhattacharya: The Delhi Capitals beat the Kolkata Knight Riders by 7 wickets thanks to a dominant opening partnership between Prithvi Shaw and Shikhar Dhawan at Delhi today in the Indian Premier League (IPL 2021). They finished off the chase with 3.3 overs to spare thanks in great part to Prithvi Shaw’s batting display.
The first innings saw KKR get off to a slow start, with Rana getting stumped early on after getting beaten by an Axar Patel delivery. Some sensible bowling from DC limited them to a relatively decent powerplay total of 45/1 after 6 overs. The course of the game changed completely in a single over, when Morgan and Narine both departed for a duck. Gill departed within the same 5-over period, thanks to a catch off an Avesh Khan delivery. Towards the end of KKR’s innings, Andre Russell accelerated his batting, leading them to a score of 154/6 in 20 overs. Russell scored 45 for KKR, while Gill scored a slow 43. For DC, Axar Patel and Lalit Yadav took two wickets each.
The DC Innings started off in fine fashion thanks to Prithvi Shaw, who played some explosive cricket to take them to 67/0 at the end of the last over of the powerplay. Shikhar Dhawan played a comparatively passive role, which allowed Shaw to get into his zone and hit the ball all around the park. They reached a partnership of 100 runs by the time 11th over rolled around, and throughout the innings, Shaw never looked to slow down. Their brilliant partnership was brought to an end, however, at 132 runs, when Dhawan was trapped for an lbw on 46 by Cummins. Prithvi Shaw’s brilliant innings then came to an end for 82 soon after, via a catch, which was followed in the same over by the dismissal of Pant. These wickets didn’t have much of an impact on the end-result though as Delhi finished the game off in 16 overs, ending up at 156/3 in 16.3 overs.