New Delhi: Bowlers and Jonny Bairstow (48, 28b, 9×4, 1×6) helped Sunrisers Hyderabad register their third win in four matches as they defeated Delhi Capitals by five wickets in their IPL encounter here, Thursday.
Chasing 130 to win, SRH, in spite of losing wickets at regular intervals, completed the task with nine balls to spare. The SRH openers – Bairstow and David Warner (10) – continued their rich vein of form adding 64 runs before the Englishman got out off Rahul Tewatia (1/10).
Warner struggled to get going through out his 18-ball stay before Kagiso Rabada (1/32) getting rid of him. Next batsmen tried to take SRH home and the visitors completed the chase in spite of having some hiccups en route to the win.
Earlier, SRH dished out a superb bowling effort to restrict hosts Delhi to a lowly 129/8. Sunrisers bowlers exploited the conditions well, making life difficult for the hosts, who simply failed to get going right from the start on a slow wicket.
Skipper Shreyas Iyer (43) tried to anchor the innings with a steady knock but he didn’t get support from the other end. It would have been more embarrassing for Delhi, if not for the cameos from Chris Morris (17) and Axar Patel (23 n o).
The pace-spin combination of Bhuvneshwar Kumar (2/27) and Mohammad Nabi (2/21) gave Sunrisers a good start, restricting Delhi to 19/1 in first four overs after the visitors won the toss and elected to field.
After conceding a boundary on the first ball, Bhuvneshwar came back to clean up Prithvi Shaw in the third over. Nabi had Dhawan caught at short fine leg by Sandeep Sharma as Delhi slumped to 36/2 after the end of the powerplay.
A lot was expected from Rishabh Pant but he too departed just after time-out in the 10th over. Trying an inside out shot, he was holed out at long off by Deepak Hooda.
Sandeep Sharma then bamboozled Rahul Tewatia with a knuckle ball as Delhi slipped to 61/4 in 11 overs. In the 14th over, Manish Pandey took a superb catch at point to remove Colin Ingram off Siddhart Kaul’s ball as Delhi lost half their side for 75.
Morris gave some momentum to Delhi’s innings but Rashid Khan got rid off Iyer and ended up being bowled as Delhi were reduced to 93/6.
With three overs to go, Morris sent Sandeep Sharma over the mid-wicket area to take Delhi across the 100-mark. Once Morris was dismissed by Bhuvneshwar in the 19th over, it was upto Axar Patel to take the score to some respectability and he tried his best, smashed a four and a last-ball six to take Delhi close to 130-run mark.
Brief scores: Delhi Capitals 129/8 (Shreyas Iyer 43; Mohammed Nabi 2/21, Bhuvneshwar Kumar 2/27) lost to Sunrisers Hyderabad 130/5 (Jonny Bairstow 48; Ishant Sharma 1/5, Rahul Tewatia 1/10) by five wickets.