NEW DELHI: Delhi Capitals has new generation of batters. The ones who did it include Jake Fraser-McGurk and Tristan Stubbs, who brought about some intimidation in their batting abilities during the second half of this year’s IPL with Abhishek Porel, one of them showing a consistency in his stylish stroke play.
Playing at a weary Kotla track against an observant Lucknow Super Giants bowling attack, Porel made up for McGurk’s freakish failure with a superb 33-ball 58 to create a base for the massive-looking Stubbs to end unbeaten on 57 off 25 balls as Capitals registered 208/4.
Capital managed to beat LSG by19 runs in the final league match due to maturity shown by two players less than 20 years old and good performance of other players from the LSG who played like experienced top order players in their league campaign that ended with them at number four having won only three matches out of seven.
The experience of Ishant Sharma (3/34) and Kuldeep Yadav (1/33) while defending could not stop them this time because scintillating innings which was scored by Nicholas Pooran took LSG close to victory but Arshad Khan’s late charge of unbeaten 58 off 33 helped take them close as they finished with189/9 and there were more dropped catches and ordinary catching ability from the caps.
As It Happened
After today’s game, both Delhis are now close to missing out on making into playoffs.
Capitals’ innings was spoilt when McGurk went all guns blazing right at the start. With opener failing for naught after being lured into flicking long-onwards where left-arm seamer Arshad Khan held onto a simple chance off the second ball bowled by him. For instance, at first sight it seemed that capitals may have to play catch-up on a placid surface that has seen 200+ totals being scored in almost every match this year.
This time Porel stood up in the Capitals dugout first and then Stubbs hammered last fears about a possible late collapse.
Porel was never going to be playing McGurk’s kind of game with his big muscles. His excellent timing and situation awareness resulted in Porel taking Capitals 73/1 at the end of the powerplay. He had already gone for four sixes and five fours by the time he reached fifty from just twenty one balls. The pitch was not as flat as it has been here this IPL. As a result, batters experienced that cutters into pitch stop, hence Shai Hope really had to wait for his deliveries before trying something bigger.
Probably it was already too hot and Bishnoi has made some very crafty delivery onto pitch which helped slow down the Capitals run rate. Porel meanwhile seemed to be running out of gas even as his skipper Rishabh Pant took 33 off 23 balls slowly.
When Porel fell caught at deep mid-wicket, it looked like Bishnoi and left-arm pacer Mohsin Khan had worked out a way to apply the choke with spells of 1/26 and 0/29 respectively.
That is where Stubbs showed how quickly he is maturing as a batter in an innings he played 25 balls faced hitting three boundaries with four sixes only but it was composed of well thought-out moves.
Therefore he chose to take singles against Bishnoi by knocking him into the gaps knowing very well that it isn’t his biggest strength to domineer spinners early on; however, when it mattered most in the latter stage of their chase he unleashed himself.
