Kings XI Punjab maintained their good run in IPL 7, as they defeated the bottom-of-the-table team Delhi Daredevils by 4 wickets and two balls to spare. Delhi team suffered yet another lost in their home soil despite of batting fairly well.
Kings XI Punjab captain George Bailey won the toss and elected to field first. He was basically relying on the super strong batting line up of his team especially Maxwell-Miller combo.
Delhi opener Murli Vijay failed again as he managed to score only 5 runs from 8 balls, however, the other opener skipper Kevin Pietersen batted sensibly and scored 49 runs from 32 balls. He built a great partnership of 71 runs with Dinesh Karthik (69 off 44 balls). Karthik helped his team to accumulate a decent total of 164/7 after 20 overs.
Both the fast bowlers of Punjab team Sandeep Sharma and Beuran Hendricks took 3 wickets and restricted Delhi from scoring a massive score. Spinner Akshar Patel bowled quite economically while conceding only 18 runs in his 4 overs and picking up the important wicket of Pietersen.
While chasing these total Kings XI Punjab team started brilliantly. Opening duo Manan Vohra (42 of 19 balls) and Virender Sehwag (23 off 22 balls) put up a partnership of 67 runs in just 38 balls. The local boy Manan smashed some balls out of the park by playing proper cricketing strokes. After his dismissal Maxwell came and hit a big six of Imran Tahir’s bowl, but he failed to stay in the middle for long. David Miller (2 off 6 balls), George Bailey (6 off 7 balls) and Wriddhiman Saha (13 off 13 balls) failed to make na impact in this match. But the young Akshar Patel proved its importance in the team by playing a match winning innings of 42 runs from just 35 balls. Rishi Dhawan ended the game by hitting a boundary in Parnell’s last over.
The spinner duo J P Duminy and Imran Tahir bowled well and picked up 2 and 3 wickets respectively. I fact they braougt their team back into the game in the middle of the Punjab innings, but at last Kings XI team kept their cool and snatched the match away from Delhi’s grip.
Aksar Patel was rightly chosen as the Man of the Match for his amazing all-round performance. He made a crucial 42 runs at the right moment and also picked up an important wicket while bowling quite economically.