Rajasthan Royals won their second match of the tournament when they beat the Delhi DareDevils by five wickets and with nine deliveries to spare. This was after the Delhi DareDevils had won the toss and elected to bat first.
Continuing their bad run of form, both Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag did not last too long and departed in quick succession. Gambhir was the first to go when his penchant to open the face of the bat had him caught by the lone slip in Shane Warne; a superlative catch by the captain. Sehwag hit the first ball he faced for a six off Dimitri Mascarhenhas, but then top-edged one to be caught by Kamran Khan.
Munaf Patel then sprung into action by scalping the wicket of last game’s man-of-the-match, T.Dilshan, while ‘keeper Dinesh Karthik’s inning ended tamely with a return catch back to Warne; Delhi 49/4 and in deep trouble.
Daniel Vettori was promoted to number six in the batting order and he had a fruitful partnership with A.B. de Villiers that more than doubled their score to 105, before the umpire Gary Baxter got one of his three wrong decisions of the night. Pitching outside the leg-stump, the batsman was declared out leg-before the wicket.
There was some slogging in the end, and the DareDevils got to 143/7 in the 20 overs.
The Royals began with the wicket of Rob Quiney, second of Baxter’s victims, when he was declared out LBW to a rather horrendous shot off Ashish Nehra. Dirk Nannes bowled a string of wides, but he was effective in preventing the run-rate from spiralling up, even as Swapnil Asnodkar hit a couple of boundaries and then created hara-kiri to be run-out.
Paul Valthaty did not last too long, while Ravindra Jadeja did get to 16 before being prized out by Mishra. When Warne also lasted all of two deliveries before being smartly stumped by Karthik, the score was 64/5 in 11 overs, with Graeme Smith at the crease and Yusuf Pathan to follow.
Pathan came and it was mayhem. Sixes and fours flew off his bat like it was as normal as the sun rising from the east, and none of the bowlers could have any hold on him. There were a couple of mis-hits, but such is the power of the man, that both cleared the fence.
Smith continued giving him moral support from the other end and finished with an unbeaten 44, where as Pathan’s 62 came from 30 deliveries only!
Pathan was the undoubted choice for the man-of-the-match. With this the Royals move to five points from five matches, while Delhi are at six from four.