Match Review of Kings XI Punjab vs. Delhi Daredevils

Indian Premier League - Match review
Date : 15th May 2011 Match No. : 60
Teams : Kings XI Punjab vs. Delhi Daredevils
Venue : Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association Stadium, Dharamsala
Umpires : Asad Rauf & S L Shastri Third Umpire: A M Saheba
Toss : Delhi Daredevils

Playing XI

Kings XI Punjab Paul Valthaty Adam Gilchrist © Shaun Marsh Dinesh Karthik Abhishek Nayar Sunny Singh R. McLaren Piyush Chawla Ryan Harris Praveen Kumar L. Ablish

Delhi Daredevils Naman Ojha David Warner C Ingram Irfan Pathan Venugopal Rao H Hopes © A Mc Donald Yogesh Nagar Shahbaz Nadeem Ajit Agarkar V R Aaron

The 60th match of this IPL season was scheduled between the Kings XI Punjab and Delhi Daredevils. The venue for this match was a stadium located in the hills in Dharamsala, Himachal. It was a completely jam packed stadium in the beautiful valley.

Punjab team, were in high spirits after defeating the strong title contenders, Mumbai Indians. Having won the last few matches, The Punjab team has gained the winning momentum back. Positioned at No. 6, this team still stands a chance of making it to the play offs in case they can manage to win all their leagues from here on.

Daredevils on the other hand have been inconsistent all through this tournament. At any stage they never looked like making it to the top 4. They are completely knocked out of the tournament; a win in this match would do no good to their standings.

The pitch at Dharamsala was a slow one to bat on. As the ground is small with short boundaries, a total of 150 plus should be a winning total. James Hopes, leading the Delhi Daredevils in the absence of an injured Sehwag, won the toss and decided to put opposition to bat.

The Punjab innings was opened by the Skipper Gilchrist and Valthaty. Initially, it was a shaky start by the Punjab as Valthaty survived a run out chance in the second over itself, courtesy some sloppy fielding by the Daredevils. Soon Gilchrist continuing with his poor form got out to Morne Morkel's delivery when he mistimed it and was caught by David Warner after scoring just 9 runs.

Shaun Marsh the star of the Punjab team was the next man in. Valthaty who has not performed good in the last few matches was lucky once again as he was dropped off a simple catch by Venugopal Rao at an individual score of 6. He made the Daredevils pay for their mistake and went ahead to put up a quick fire 102 runs partnership with Marsh for the 3rd wicket stand.

Punjab completely dominated the Daredevils bowling and the expensive over from the newcomer Sriram changed the momentum for them. The Daredevils displayed a very poor performance on the field with few dropped chances and helped them convert their singles to doubles easily.

Irfan Pathan was impressive with this bowling and sent these two men back to the pavilion in the same over. Valthaty and Marsh scored 62 (50) and 46 (28) runs respectively. Punjab at this stage were 123/3 in the 15th over. With this innings Valthaty once again became the leading run scorer and hence the owner of the Orange cap. Dinesh Karthik, the man of the match from the last match and the hitter Hussey were the two new men at crease. Though Hussey could not stick to the crease for very long and got out cheaply after scoring 3, Karthik was involved in couple of small partnerships. These small and quick partnerships helped them take the team total to 170, which was probably 15-20 runs in excess of what they had thought.

Though it was a small boundary in this stadium, 170 was a huge ask for the Daredevils. The innings was opened by Naman Ojha and David Warner who gave a decent start to the side. The Daredevils have been losing too many wickets in most of their clashes within the first 6 overs and that has been the reason of their failures. But these two openers decided to stick to the crease.

Though Ojha and Warner were not scoring at a stunning pace but were hitting the ball quite sharply. They put up a 52 runs partnership for the 1st wicket before Ojha fell victim to Srivastava after scoring 28 runs. Soon, Srivastava hit back again and picked up Warner's wicket at an individual score of 29 runs. The Daredevils were 2 wickets down for 67 runs in the 10 over.

With the required run rate above 9 per over, Rao and Sriram, the two men at the crease started feeling the pressure. The Punjab spinner Piyush Chawla's excellent bowling and some outstanding fielding helped them remove the middle order without any trouble. The Daredevils batting received a severe blow as the middle order completely collapsed. Before reaching the 3 figure mark, the Daredevils were 6 wickets down in the 16th over.

Though Birt, Nagar and Morkel made some contributions to the total, but all they could manage to reach was 141 runs. Birt got out to stunning full stretched catch by Harris at the boundary. The Punjab team outplayed the Daredevils in all departments of the game.

Result: Kings XI Punjab won by 29 runs

The Awards

Man of the match
Piyush Chawla for his excellent spell

Maximum Sixes
Shaun Marsh for hitting three 6's

Kingfisher Fair Play Award
Chennai Super Kings top the chart

Orange Cap (The leading run scorer)
Paul Valthaty, Kings XI Punjab.

Purple Cap (The leading wicket taker)
Lasith Mallinga- Mumbai Indians



Last Updated on 16 May 2011