It wasn’t the highest scoring match of the tournament. However, after 40 overs of cricket, we have a winner in Kings XI Punjab. Winning the toss, Delhi Capitals elected to bowl first. Kings XI Punjab, led by Ravichandran Ashwin, scored 166 runs in 20 overs. It seemed unlikely that they’d reach that score but for a last over cameo by Mandeep Singh. Sam Curran was the star of the day, picking up four for eleven. Punjab was clearly the better team today and beat Delhi by 14 runs.
Sum Curran and Lokesh Rahul opened for KXIP and both were dispatched pretty quickly. The openers gave a good start but that was not well capitalised by the next batsman Mayan Agarwal who was run out for 6 runs. Sarfaraz Khan and David Miller stood out among the Punjab batsmen scoring 39 and 43 respectively. The run flow was quite slow and the duo only managed to pick up the pace in the latter stages of their innings. Mandeep Singh was the next batsman and he stayed at the non-striker's end for a while, as Hardus Viljoen, Ravi Ashwin, Murugan Ashwin and Mohammed Shami departed with single digits. Mujeeb Ur Rahman was the last batsman but he didn’t get the strike. With Rahman at the non-striker’s end, Mandeep got the strike and managed to score a four and a six in the last over, taking the total to 166 runs. It wasn’t a big total, and that meant that Punjab’s bowling had to be tight.
However, Delhi suddenly lost their ground as both Pant and Ingram departed. Shami bowled Pant at 39 while Ingram was claimed by Sam Curran. Chris Morris gave away his wicket trying to take an unnecessary single. The last batsman from Delhi, Hanuma Vihari was bowled by Shami soon after. Following that, it was complete dominance from Sam Curran who nailed a hat-trick and picked up Harshal Patel, Kagiso Rabada and Sandeep Lamichhane. In the end, Delhi finished at 152, losing all their wickets.
It was surprising to see the sudden counter-attack from Punjab since Delhi had the upper hand on the match. Sam Curran was particularly outstanding – replacing Chris Gayle, there were high expectations on him. Eventually, he took 4 wickets in less than three overs, giving away only eleven.
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