Delhi Capitals showcased different kind of batting without pressure: Pragyan Ojha

Delhi Capitals had gone out of reckoning for the IPL playoffs over the weekend. Their objective from the remaining matches was to build towards the next season, work on issues that need fixing and go out with their heads held high after a dismal season that witnessed five consecutive defeats to begin with. On Wednesday night, they hurt Punjab Kings’ chances of going forward with a 15-run win at the HPCA Stadium in Dharamsala.

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Rilee Rossouw (82* from 37 balls), Prithvi Shaw (54 from 38 balls) and David Warner (46 from 31 balls) all came good for DC at the top of the order to take them to 213/2 at the close.

This was Delhi’s biggest score of the season and their sixth-highest in IPL history. Disappointingly for the team, it came in a dead rubber. However, Pragyan Ojha said absence of pressure liberated DC and its batters.

“Coach and mentors will be asking where these Delhi Capitals were. The way they batted, the way Prithvi Shaw did it, the way David Warner did, and later when Rilee Rossouw did it. I think, from what I see, when the pressure was on, they were playing differently. Now that the pressure is off and they’re not in the race in the tournament, we’ve gotten a chance to see different kind of batting from them,” said Ojha on JioCinema.

Ojha’s fellow IPL expert Aakash Chopra questioned the decision behind giving the ball to Harpreet Brar for the final over. The left-arm spinner went for 23 runs in what eventually became the difference between the two sides.

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“If you were to ask Rilee Rossouw what he wants on Christmas as a gift, he’d tell you, ‘I want a left-arm spinner to bowl the 20th over in a game when I already have 80 runs’. He got that exactly. There’s a problem here. If you’re a spinner — Harpreet Brar had bowled two overs before this — he was trying to bowl yorkers there. If he’s trying to bowl yorkers and the batter decides he’ll run forward, the ball doesn’t have the pace to change it from a yorker. You know a fast bowler is bowling a yorker, as (Liam) Livingston saw with Mukesh (Kumar) and Khaleel (Ahmed), he didn’t move from his spot because you can’t reach the spot if you step out. With a left-arm spinner bowling, he wasn’t stepping out, he was running out,” said Chopra.

During the chase, Liam Livingstone scored a scintillating 94-run knock from 48 balls with five boundaries and nine sixes. But it wasn’t enough as DC won to all but take PBKS out of IPL playoff reckoning.

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