Knights in armour

Two of the most unorthodox spin bowlers, Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy, spun a web around Delhi Capitals as the duo consigned the home team to a 14-run loss.

Delhi were cruising towards victory with skipper Axar Patel and Faf du Plessis, who survived early nerves, taking the home team to 136 by the 13th over, needing to overhaul Kolkata Knight Riders’ score of 204.

However, they stumbled to a devastating loss, failing to take advantage of the foundation laid by a 76-run stand for the fourth wicket.

Delhi Capitals had a double task going into the match against KKR. The first task was for their inconsistent middle order to come to the party and the second was to tackle the spinning trio of Narine, Chakravarthy and Anukul Roy. The team failed at both tasks, stumbling when it came to the crunch situation of the match

Narine and Chakravarthy played central role as the unorthodox duo shared five wickets between them to help KKR to an unlikely win from a losing position.

Narine struck twice in the same over to stun the home crowd. Bringing himself on in the 13th over as the stand-in skipper after Ajinkya Rahane’s hand injury, he first removed Axar by foxing him with a faster delivery that was lobbed to Harshit Rana at extra cover. Four balls later, he castled Tristan Stubbs.

The West Indian then returned in the 16th over to scalp the prized wicket of du Plessis, who was batting on 62. The former South African skipper toe-ended a carrom ball to hand a simple catch to Rinku Singh near the deep mid-wicket boundary.

With Narine opening the doors for an unlikely win, Chakravarthy put the icing on the cake by bagging two wickets in the 18th over. First, the dangerous Ashutosh Sharma was caught at backward point while trying to score a boundary of a reverse hit. The very next ball, Mitchell Starc skied one to wicketkeeper Rahmanullah Gurbaz. All-rounder Vipraj Nigam kept the home team with an outside chance with a 19-ball 38 but when he was bowled by Andre Russell, it consigned Delhi to a fourth loss in five games.

DC spinners stall KKR

Delhi Capitals held their nerves to restrict KKR to 204/9. Having scored 79 runs in the first six overs, KKR were on course to register a score upwards of 220. However, DC spinners led by skipper Axar and leg-spinner Nigam dismissed both Rahane and Narine in a space of four balls to stall the frantic scoring from the KKR team. Starc then returned to clean the tail as KKR were restricted to scoring only 36 runs in the last four overs, while losing five wickets.

Brief scores: Kolkata Knight Riders: 204/9 (Raghuvanshi 44; Starc 3/43, Axar 2/27); Delhi Capitals: 190/9 (du Plessis 62; Narine 3/29, Chakravarthy 2/39)

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