Delhi Daredevils 165 for 1 (Sehwag 95*, Jayawardene 59) beat Mumbai Indians 161 for 4 (Rohit Sharma 73, Tendulkar 54) by 9 wickets
On a hot Sunday afternoon, two bowling attacks got into a contest of who could get worse. Mumbai Indians outdid their Delhi Daredevils counterparts by a comfortable margin, and handed Daredevils their first win in seven attempts this season.
To give credit where it's due, Daredevils were ordinary for a much shorter duration. They only let things go after they had reduced Mumbai to 24 in six overs, giving Rohit Sharma full toss after full toss to deposit into the stands, and conceding 161 runs.
Mumbai's Jasprit Bumrah and Munaf Patel, though, were poor from the start, letting the hitherto struggling Virender Sehwag and Mahela Jayawardene run away with the chase after which the duo regained their touch too.
The match couldn't have started more differently. After Mumbai finally split the faltering box-office opening combination of Sachin Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting, Daredevils' left-arm bowlers stifled the top order on a slow pitch. Finally included, Roelof van der Merwe made the biggest difference, with the wicket of Dwayne Smith in the third over.
Everything was going in Daredevils' favour. They have got the danger man Dinesh Karthik with a deflection from Umesh Yadav in his follow-through, and Tendulkar was struggling to strike at a run a ball.
They somehow took Mumbai to 57 for 2 in 10 overs, but then the deluge started. Andre Russell, for some reason replacing Morne Morkel, began with a full toss for Rohit to hit a six. In the next over, Shahbaz Nadeem dropped Tendulkar.
In between the odd classy shot and heave, Roht kept getting his loose balls. In all he was given five full tosses, off which he scored 20 runs and was holed out on the last. These were not yorkers gone wrong, these were knee-high full bungers. Around more ordinary fielding, Mumbai kept prospering, but this was nothing compared to what was to follow.
Bumrah, of the strange action, might have been rescued by dodgy umpiring in the previous match he played, but his angle and his gentle pace and length bowling was fodder for the batsmen this time around. His first over finished, Bumrah went to short fine leg to drop Sehwag off Munaf Patel.
It shouldn't take away from how poor the delivery was: short, down the leg side, with the fine leg up in the circle.
Munaf didn't stop doing that in his first, two-over spell, and was consistently picked away on the leg side past the short fine leg. While Bumrah paid for that wide angle, Munaf was penalised for not bowling to his fields, and their next overs yielded 17 each. At 50 for 0 after five overs, these two had smelled blood, and you don't let Sehwag and Jayawardene smell blood. Why didn't I get such bowling when I was opening, David Warner would have thought in the dugout.
Matching each other shot for shot now, they carved through some of the better bowling, whipping Lasith Malinga, reverse-sweeping Harbhajan Singh, delighting the home crowd that has refused to stay away despite all the losses, becoming only the third combination in IPL to have registered two hundred-run opening stands.
What chance did Dwayne Smith stand? In his second over, the 10th of the chase, Smith was carved away for four by Sehwag and paddled away for a six by Jayawardene.
And that six, coming as early as it did, brought the asking rate down to a run a ball. No collapse, fashionable as it might be, followed, and the remaining 53 were got in just 45 balls.
Toss Mumbai Indians chose to bat v Delhi Daredevils
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The Delhi crowd went up in a huge cheer as soon as the opposition, Mumbai Indians, won the toss. The reason was obvious: on a hot day and on a flat pitch, there was no way the team winning the toss was going to field. Which meant a high chance that Sachin Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting would kick off the game.
There were changes aplenty in both sides who are coming off huge losses by 80-plus runs. Dwayne Smith, Munaf Patel and Jasprit Bumrah replaced Mitchell Johnson, Pragyan Ojha and Rishi Dhawan for Mumbai.
Delhi Daredevils finally gave Roelof van der Merwe a game, and it took an injury to Jeevan Mendis for it to happen. Venugopal Rao came in for the injured Manprit Juneja. They also left out Morne Morkel for Andre Russell.
Mumbai Indians 1 Sachin Tendulkar, 2 Ricky Ponting (capt.), 3 Dinesh Karthik (wk), 4 Rohit Sharma, 5 Kieron Pollard, 6 Ambati Rayudu, 7 Dwayne Smith, 8 Harbhajan Singh, 9 Jasprit Bumrah, 10 Lasith Malinga, 11 Munaf Patel
Delhi Daredevils 1 David Warner, 2 Virender Sehwag, 3 Venugopal Rao, 4 Mahela Jayawardene (capt.), 5 Roelof van der Merwe, 6 Kedar Jadhav (wk), 7 Andre Russell, 8 Irfan Pathan, 9 Ajit Agarkar, 10 Shahbaz Nadeem, 11 Umesh Yadav
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