Dinda (3/20) and Zampa (3/21) dampen Daredevils’ chance to the ‘play-offs’ : Royal Supergiants Pune (RPS), languishing at the bottom of the Points Table are virtually out of the tournament, with just one more game to go.
However, that does not prevent them from causing a few upsets and being a dampener in the hopes of a few teams vying for a slot in the ‘play-offs’.
This is precisely what they did to Delhi Daredevils (DD) in the encounter between the two teams that took place at Dr YS Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium, Vishakapatnam, home-turf of RPS.
Put into bat, the visitors were ‘all at sea’ against the ‘fiery’ bowling of Ashok Dinda and the ‘guile’ of Adam Zampa.
The two bowlers ran amok and never allowed the batsmen of DD to settle down.
Picking up the two openers, Shreyas Iyer (2) and Quinton de Kock (8), in a span of 16 deliveries, Ashok Dinda put DD in a spot of bother with just 25 runs on the board in 4.5 overs.
Only Karun Nair (41, 43b, 5*4) showed some grit and held on to one end unless Zampa show-cased his spinning abilities, in the 15th over, bowled one flat on the off-stump that spun quite a bit. Nair tried to sweep but missed the line completely, and was wrapped on the pads. The ball might have missed the stumps, but the onfield Umpire Chettithody Shamsuddin seemed to be convinced about the ball knocking off the stump, adjudged Nair, ‘leg before wicket’.
Meanwhile, Zampa also accounted for Sanju Samson (10) and the young Rishabh Pant (4), ending with the analysis of 4-0-21-3.
Dinda came back in his second spell and claimed the wicket of JP Duminy.
A rearguard action by Chris Morris in the 19th and 20th overs, gave some sort of respectability to DD’s score.
Morris plundered 11 runs in the 19th over and another 21 runs in the 20th over to take DD to a tally of 121 runs for the loss of 6 wickets in 20 overs.
The bowlers to suffer at the hands of Morris, were Dinda in the 19th over and Thisara Perera in the 20th over respectively.
Dinda finished with the figures of 4-1-20-3.
Chasing 122 runs was no big deal for RPS with their batting strength. They started off well but rain stopped play in the 9th over, with the score reading 57 runs for the loss of 1 wicket. Rahane was unbeaten on 26* and George Bailey on 6* respectively.
The unfinished ninth over bowled by Coulter-Nile was completed after the play resumed.
At the time of rain interruption in the 9th over, RPS were ahead of the ‘par score’ of 42 runs under the Duckworth-Lewis method.
However, rains came back after the completion of 11th over. Looking at the intensity of the rain, it was decided to call off the match. At that stage RPS had 76 runs on the board for the loss of 1 wicket and were declared winners by 19 runs under the D/L method.
The win earned them 2 points taking their tally to 8 points from 14 games.
For his bowling exploits, Dinda was awarded the Player of the Match.
