PBKS vs DC: In the hills, Kings fall off the cliff
Delhi’s 15-run win has all but ended Punjab’s knockout hopes.
Punjab Kings’s captain Shikhar Dhawan opted for the spin of Harpreet Brar in the 20th over of the first innings where 23 runs came. The move perhaps proved the difference in the end. With 34 runs needed from 5 balls, Delhi Capitals’s Ishant Sharma strangely risked bowling high full tosses in pursuit of the yorker. Eventually, an above waist-high no ball stirred the dead game to life but with the equation reading 16 from 3, Livingstone failed to connect with a full toss. Game over.
At the core, Rilee Rossouw’s game is simple, enunciated by himself in the past: “It doesn’t matter what stage you’re playing on – at the World Cup or back home. Just try and see the little white ball and hit the little white ball. It doesn’t matter who’s running in. Obviously some people have made names for themselves in cricket and you’ve got to take that into consideration. But at the end of the day someone’s bowling the ball to you and you’ve got to hit it.”
At the end of the day, there was Kagiso Rabada and Sam Curran bowling at him in Dharamshala and boy, did he wallop them. He walloped his first ball to midwicket boundary but it was a sweet cover drive a few balls later that underlined his composure. He picked the off-pace full delivery from Curran and caressed it between cover and mid-off. Similarly, in the 13th over, from Rabada, in between two muscled boundaries – a four over long-off and a picked-up six over backward square-leg, he had a deft late dab to third man boundary. He was hitting, and yet he was in control, composed, not slogging every ball. The six off Rabada was a fine one; no balance-affecting feet movement but just the knees flexed, he crouched, and the hands swung. And Rossouw smashed Brar for a couple of sixes and a four in a 23-run final over.
- By Abhishek
- 18 May 2023 4:24 PM IST
