Fast bowler Ashok Dinda knocked over the Delhi Daredevils openers within five overs, before R Ashwin and Adam Zampa found sharp turn to smother Daredevils to 121 for 6. Karun Nair, who showed considerable application to top score with 41, later said that his team was 25-30 runs short. Rain gave Daredevils two reprieves in their defence, before the game was called off by midnight. Ajinkya Rahane’s patient 42 steered Supergiants ahead in the chase and dented Daredevils’ chances of making the playoffs. Supergiants’ 19-run win via D/L method meant that they dragged themselves off the bottom of the table.
Daredevils can still qualify for the playoffs with 14 or 16 points, but their current net rate of -0.125 means they may need to win by a substantial margin in their remaining two games.
The pitch on Tuesday was the same one used for the last two matches in Visakhapatnam. The conditions both overhead and underfoot and Supergiants’ improved fielding offered no breathing room for Daredevils until Morris blazed away. He struck the first six of the match in the final over of Daredevils’ innings and capped an otherwise sluggish innings with another muscled six over midwicket. But the game was Supergiants’ after they kept Daredevils to 28 for 2, their third sub-30 score, in the Powerplay this season.
Dinda got his first ball to swing prodigiously as he rapped Quinton de Kock’s pad with an inducker. This was heading down leg, but Dinda had the South Africa opener lbw for 8 off 10, with a similar ball in his second over. Dinda then prolonged the lean patch of the returning Shreyas Iyer. In his next over, Dinda bounced Iyer out for his fifth single-digit score in six games this season.
Nair began fluently with drives and pulls against the seamers before the advent of spin restored Supergiants’ ascendancy. Zampa worked Samson over, stumping him with a perfect legbreak, following a brace of skiddy, quicker balls. He went on to remove Rishabh Pant and Nair in his next two overs. Daredevils were reduced to 70 for 5 in 14.3 overs.
R Ashwin, who was introduced in the 12th over, sent down a spell that read: 4-0-23-0. JP Duminy hung on for a run-a-ball 14 before he scooped Dinda to short fine leg.
Morris mowed six boundaries, including two sixes and two fours off the last four balls of the innings, to finish with an unbeaten 38 off 20 balls.
Usman Khawaja threw away another bright start when he sliced Morris to backward point, but Ajinkya Rahane gave the chase substance with three off-driven fours and an upper cut off a Coulter-Nile bouncer. A top-edge off another sharp bouncer from the Australia fast bowler detached George Bailey’s helmet before rain forced a delay of nearly an hour. Supergiants needed 65 off 70 balls when play resumed at 11.30 and Bailey shook off the blow by getting on top of another lifting ball and whipping past midwicket.
Sixteen balls after the first interruption, rain made another appearance. This one brought an end to the game.
