Double header Saturday was full of excitement at the Indian Premier League's 32nd day. Whereas the Sunrisers Hyderabad took on the Rising Pune Supergiants in Match No 44 at the Rajiv Gandhi Intl. Cricket Stadium, Hyderabad, the Delhi Daredevils were up against Mumbai Indians on their home ground at the Feroz Shah Kotla Ground in Delhi for Match No 45.
The Hyderabad team has the advantage (and the pressure) of being title defender. Plus they had the home side advantage. Winning the toss, they put the Pune team into bat.
While batsmen such as Ajinkya Rahane (22 off 20), Steven Smith (34 off 39), Ben Stokes (39 off 25 and M S Dhoni (31 off 21) made useful contributions, the lower order batsmen did not make much of an impact. Siddharth Kaul was the pick of the SRH bowlers with his 4 wicket haul. In spite of openers David Warner (40 off 34) and Shikhar Dhawan (19 off 12) giving their team a good start and in spite of Yuvraj Singh's fighting 47 off 43, SRH fell short of their target. RPS won by 12 runs in the end.
It was a match winning performance from Jaydev Unadkat. He took a hat-trick and ended up with 5 wickets (Yuvraj Singh, Naman Ojha, Bipul Sharma, Rashid Khan, Bhuwneshwar Kumar). This was the first time SRH were defeated at home.
The award for the perfect Catch of the Match went to Rahul Tripathi. The Maximum Sixes award went to Ben Stokes. The Stylish Player of the Day was Ben Stokes again and the Player of the Match, predictably was Unadkat.
The home team led by Zaheer Khan won the toss and put the visitors in to bat. Lendl Simmons (66 off 43) and Parthiv Patel (25 off 22) had the Mumbai team off to a great start. Keiron Pollard’s spectacular 63 off 35 ad Hardik Pandya's valuable 29 off 14 got the Mumbai team up to a formidable 212.
With Sanju Samson departing on the first ball, two other batsmen out without scoring (Rishabh Pant and Kagiso Rabada) and only three batsmen reaching double figures (Karun Nair with 21 off 15, Corey Anderson 10 off 8 and Pat Cummins 10 off 10) Delhi always looked out of sorts. Harbhajan Singh and Karn Sharma took three wickets each. Ultimately DD collapsed to a humiliating 146 run defeat; which effectively means they are out of the reckoning for the playoffs now. Thiswas the biggest ever losing margin for the IPL.
The perfect Catch of the Match award went to Rohit Sharma. The Maximum Sixes award went to Kieron Pollard for his 4 sixes and the Stylish Player of the Match award also went to Pollard. The Player of the Match was Lendl Simmons of MI.
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