Despite the early impetus by the likes of Prithvi Shaw, Jake Fraser-McGurk, and Abhishek Porel, the Delhi Capitals slid to a heavy defeat in the IPL 2024 clash against the SunRisers Hyderabad at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Saturday. T Natarajan had an outstanding night with the ball, registering figures of 4-1-19-4 as the SunRisers won by 67 runs and moved to 2nd in the points table.
SunRisers Hyderabad continued to raze down records for fun as they smashed 266 in their stipulated 20 overs in Delhi Capitals' homecoming in IPL 2024. Travis Head (89) set the tone with a 16-ball half-century and his 131-run opening stand with Abhishek Sharma. Despite a mini collapse, the visiting side were aided by a half-century partnership between Shahbaz Ahmed and Nitish Reddy, with the former finishing unbeaten at 59.
Toss Update:
Delhi Capitals skipper Rishabh Pant has won the toss and has elected to field first against the SunRisers Hyderabad at the Arun Jaitely Stadium. The keeper-batter cited the dew factor and their batting-heavy unit as the reason behind opting to bowl first. Nevertheless, SunRisers skipper Pat Cummins expressed confidence with his bowling line-up and was satisfied to bat.
SunRisers Hyderabad have arguably been the most in-form batting unit this season as Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Heinrich Klaasen, and Aiden Markram have been in fiery form. The opening pair of Head and Abhishek have struck at 226 and have amassed one century and half-century stand thus far. Nevertheless, their bowling still has some room for improvement.
The Capitals, meanwhile, are coming off consecutive wins over the Lucknow Super Giants and Gujarat Titans. Delhi were especially ruthless against the Titans, bundling them out for only 89 and chasing it down in 8.5 overs, thereby improving their net run-rate exponentially. Nevertheless, they trail the Sunrisers marginally in head-to-head contest, losing 12 out of 23 matches.
Delhi Capitals and SunRisers Hyderabad playing XI:
DC playing XI: David Warner, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Abishek Porel, Rishabh Pant(w/c), Tristan Stubbs, Axar Patel, Lalit Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav, Anrich Nortje, Khaleel Ahmed, Mukesh Kumar.
SRH playing XI: Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head, Aiden Markram, Heinrich Klaasen(w), Abdul Samad, Nitish Reddy, Shahbaz Ahmed, Pat Cummins(c), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mayank Markande, T Natarajan
