Saturday night in Delhi delivered a new slice of T20 history. Delhi Capitals put 264 on the board – usually enough, you’d think – yet Punjab Kings reeled it in with seven balls unused. It is now the highest successful pursuit ever seen in the format.
The chase was basically won inside the first six overs, the so-called powerplay (fielding restrictions, only two men allowed outside the circle). Prabhsimran Singh and Priyansh Arya belted 116 in that spell, the second-best powerplay in IPL history, dragging the asking rate from 13.25 to a far tamer 10.50. From there, the rest of the batting card could breathe.
Speaking on ESPNcricinfo’s Time:Out, former West Indies all-rounder Carlos Brathwaite felt Delhi never really put the squeeze on early.
“They could’ve been a little bit more proactive,” he said. “Get Kuldeep [Yadav] on [early]. He may not get a wicket but he may stem the flow of runs for an over.”
Axar Patel, captaining Capitals, gave four of the first five overs to Auqib Nabi and Mukesh Kumar. Between them they leaked 87 runs – an economy touching 22. Axar’s own solitary over cost 20 more. T Natarajan managed a relatively frugal nine off his first, yet he bowled only that single powerplay over before disappearing to the outfield. Kuldeep didn’t appear until the eighth, by which time the openers had lifted the score to 127.
Brathwaite felt those choices left PBKS’ middle order – Shreyas Iyer in particular – with a luxury few chasing teams enjoy.
“They did so much in the powerplay that when Shreyas came in, he could be eight off his first balls,” he noted. “[That would] never [be] possible if you need to score 19 or 20 per over.”
In Brathwaite’s eyes, a total of 260-plus still demands aggression from the bowling side, preferably via your best operators, even if it looks counter-intuitive. “Try to get wickets in the powerplay or bowl your best bowlers in the powerplay to be defensive but also push the required run-rate up to 20-21-22.”
Former India wicketkeeper Deep Dasgupta, also on the programme, focused on the quality of the hitting – or rather, the lack of slogging.
“Would you call that hitting? They were playing normal cricket shots,” he said. “The moment you say hitting, the connotation is that they’re playing fancy shots, trying too hard, trying to muscle. But the beauty about that opening pair was about how easy they made it look.”
“They have really good options,” Brathwaite chimed in, breaking down Prabhsimran’s method – front-foot drives mixed with late cuts, plenty of range without thrashing at everything.
Prabhsimran’s 76 from 26 balls and Arya’s 43 off 17 set things up. When both fell in the seventh and eighth overs, Shreyas marched in and finished the job, unbeaten on 71 from 36. Not once did the required rate climb back above 12.
For Delhi, the post-mortem is fairly blunt: 264 is huge, but the ball still needs to be in the right places straight away. They have a couple of days to figure out how before the next fixture rolls around.
