Delhi Capitals captain Rishabh Pant admitted they didn’t bat well and the score of 153 was below par after their seven-wicket loss against Kolkata Knight Riders at the Eden Gardens, Kolkata on Monday. DC won the toss and decided to bat first but the move didn’t pay dividends as they kept losing wickets at regular intervals.
Prithvi Shaw was strangled down the leg side whereas in-form Jake Fraser-McGurk was dismissed by his compatriot Mitchell Starc. Shai Hope was cleaned up by Vaibhav Arora whereas Abishek Porel was bowled by Harshit Rana.
DC captain Rishabh Pant was given a reprieve as he was dropped by Rana when he was on 18 but the left-hander could not make the most of his second life as he was dismissed after scoring 27 by Varun Chakravarthy. Kuldeep Yadav’s unbeaten 35 helped DC go past the 150-run mark but it was never going to be enough.
On the other hand, KKR got off to a blistering start, as their openers – Phillip Salt and Sunil Narine – smoked 79 runs in the Powerplay overs with the former doing the bulk of the damage. The Englishman completed his fifty off just 26 balls and also had the rub of the green as his catch was fluffed by Lizaad Williams.
Salt scored 68 off 33 balls whereas Shreyas Iyer and Ventakesh Iyer added the finishing touches as they scored 33 and 26 runs respectively.
Rishabh Pant said after the loss, “ It was a good option to bat first. As a batting unit we didn’t bat well, 150 was below par with how things were going. But we learn from our mistakes, every day is not your day.”
He added, “The way we were going as a team was nice (winning 4 out of their last 5 games), but these games come along in T20s. I think anything around 180-210 would have been a good score, we didn’t give our bowlers enough runs to defend.”
Delhi Capitals will next take on table-leaders Rajasthan Royals at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, Delhi on 7th May.
