IPL 2020: Delhi Capitals win against Kings X1 Punjab in IPL 2020’s first super over

Delhi Capitals and Kings X1 have played a game of see-sawing fortunes where the former prevailed by keeping the nerves. The winner could not be decided in 40 overs and we had first super over of IPL 2020. Kings team managed the lowest ever score on IPL history- 2 and Capitals knock off the runs to win a wild game of fluctuating fortunes.

Kings X1 team won the toss and decided to field first to take early advantage of green covering of wicket and fee later on which was going to set in the second part of the match. Sheldon Cottrell and Mohammad Shami were on the money with, Shami using the skiddy bouncers to full effect.

By the end of 4th over Delhi had lost Dhawan, Shaw and Hetmyer with only 13 runs on board. Pant and Shreyas then started to take the safer route of playing cautiously and working hard for every run. As innings went on Iyer took Gowtham to cleaners and for the first time in the match, DC’s run rate has crossed 6. Slowly Pant and Shreyas were giving their bowlers something to bowl at.

Ravi Bishnoi, India’s U-19 star had a good debut outing as he kept Pant in check and got his wicket as well. Iyer and Axar followed soon and Capitals were looking again in a dire situation with 6 wickets down for 96 runs in 16 overs. Stoinis who had come after Pant’s wicket took the matter in his own hands and started hitting boundaries at will to put Kings X1 Punjab under pressure. 57 runs came off last 3 overs with Stoinis scoring 49 of them. Jordan, death over specialist for Punjab and had bowled a good last over two weeks ago to deny Stoinis the chance of winning first T20 game in England, went for 30 runs in final over and unfortunately, bowled everything in the slot of Stoinis.

At one stage what was looking a 120-125 run target helped by late onslaught Capitals managed to post a fighting score of 157. Kings would have fancied to chase it down with dew also going to play its part. Kings had a good start with Rahul got them going with a six of a free hit of Mohit. Iyer persisted with his pacer for another over and he repaid the faith by removing Rahul for 21. Ashwin then changed the direction of the match by removing Karun and Pooran in his only over, suffered shoulder injury on the last ball of over and could not bowl any more, Maxwell followed in next over and by the middle of 7th over Kings were tottering at 35/4.

Mayank who was playing sedately then joined Sarfaraz and slowly started rebuilding. Sarfaraz fell in 10th over with Punjab requiring 93 of last 10. The second half of Punjab’s batting was opposite to first half. Aggarwal and Gowtham added 46 for 6th wicket to put Kings back in contention but the run rate was going up considerably. Once Gowtham fell Agarwal took matters in his hands and switched gears effortlessly and gave special treatment to Mohit, whom he plundered 17 runs in 18th over to bring the equation to 25 of 12. He hit Rabada for two hours to bring the equation down to 13 of 6.

With dew also not helping bowling team, Stoinis who had to bowl the last over had a difficult task at hand with a well set Agarwal to bowl to. Agarwal hit first and the third ball for a six and four to bring the equation to 1 of 3. Stoinis was not finished yet and deserved some luck for the kind of innings he had played. He bowled a dot and then got two lucky wickets of two full toss balls as the match went to super over.

Rabada who was going to bowl the Super Over for Capitals was spot on. He gave away only two runs and dismissed both batsmen in 3 balls only. Shami, who had created havoc in the first innings with a spell of 3/15 of 4 overs, was given the responsibility of defending the impossible task. Pant and Shreyas knocked off the runs in first two balls only and helped Delhi start their IPL campaign with a win.

Punjab had done the most part right and should have won the match in 40 overs only but they could not cross the line with a short run call going against them. Delhi who were on the back foot right from toss time found players to played stunning cameos and managed to pip Kings at the end.

Delhi have a 4-day break before taking on CSK and Kings will take on RCB on Thursday.