Delhi Capitals (DC) thrashed Punjab Kings (PBKS) by 17 runs in the 64th match of the ongoing IPL 2022 on Monday (May 16) at DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai to earn two very crucial points.
With this much-needed victory, Delhi Capitals (DC) pushed Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) to the fifth spot and they jumped to the fourth spot with a positive net run rate in the IPL 2022 points table with 14 points.
Now, DC just needs one victory over hapless Mumbai Indians (MI) on May 21 in their last group stage match to make it to the playoffs of the ongoing IPL 2022.
Coming back to the match, DC came to bat first after losing the toss, and went on to post a competitive 159/7 on the board against the PBKS, thanks to Mitchell Marsh’s stunning knock of 63 runs off 48 balls.
Defending the total, DC bowled brilliantly, as they restricted PBKS to 142 with Shardul Thakur taking 4 wickets, while Akshar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav each snared two scalps to win the match by 17 runs.
After the match, Marsh said that he had made up his mind to attack the PBKS bowlers in powerplay before the ball started to turn, while claiming spin was the decisive factor in DC's win on Monday.
Marsh said after the match: “It was a great win. You can never judge a wicket until both teams bat on it. I walked off sort of thinking that we left a couple out there. But it turned, didn’t it. The spinners turned the game in the middle and 160 wound up being enough.”
The all-rounder added: “(The intent was to) Get as many as I can in the powerplay before it starts turning. For the last sort of 18 months, I’ve had that mentality in the powerplay. I thought it was a really good partnership with Sarfaraz. He played some amazing shots. It would’ve been nice to get out of the powerplay one down and then we probably could have kept going. But our innings was sort of stop-start with wickets. Credit goes to the bowlers. The way they (Punjab) bowled was outstanding.”
On DC’s batting, Marsh noted: “It’s just about getting a partnership going. We probably weren’t able to quite do that throughout our middle overs and that doesn’t allow you to get up to a 180 score. It’s just about whoever comes in, trying to build that partnership. Even if it’s 15 or 20 runs, it can change momentum. On Monday night, we weren’t able to do that, but like I said, 160 wound up being enough.”
He further explained, “I think that’s our first back-to-back win of the season. We spoke about that (before the match). It’s been one of those seasons where we’ve been stop-start. In long tournaments like this, it’s about peaking at the right time. I think over the last week or 10 days, we’ve played some really good cricket and that’s a really good sign. We’ve got one more to go.”
Marsh signed off by saying, “We know if we win that, we’ll be in the finals and we can give it a real good shake. I’ve got great belief in this team. We’ve got a lot of talent across the board and if we can string one more together going into the finals, it’ll give us great momentum.”
(With IANS Inputs)
