No Pietersen. No win. No fun.
The Delhi Daredevils copped a smacking last night from the rampant Chennai Super Kings, with Chennai notching up it’s largest ever IPL victory in terms of runs.
After going down to the force of Aussie superstar Glenn Maxwell, the Super Kings gained confidence from this outing, as they shattered Delhi’s play-offs hopes into smithereens. They did this by getting up on them by a colossal margin of 93 runs. The Daredevils virtually handed the match to Chennai on a silver platter. Chennai went to the buffet, and boy did they fill their plates!
There was one principal star today, and that was attacking left-handed batsman Suresh Raina, who is still proving his worth for India. Today he really got a piece of Delhi’s bowlers. Although, they only came in fragments.
With his prestigious lofted drive and his cut that disconcerted Delhi, Raina brought up yet another half-century, with 5 fours and 1 maximum incorporated into that 41 ball score of 56.
His stupendous man of the match performance guided Chennai to 177 for the loss of 7 wickets. Although this doesn’t sound like a gargantuan total, it was proven to be way too much for Delhi to handle, and they crumbled to an embarrassing score of 84 all out from 15.4 overs.
I think the problem with Delhi is that they just don’t really have a sufficient amount of confidence nor experience. When faced with an ‘awkward’ total such as last night’s they just go into a quandary and do not have any clue what to do, so they just swing and hope for the best. To be successful in T20 these days, you still need to build an innings and keep a cool head. Although it sounds like great fun, reality is you can’t just go out there and smash everything.
You can see that the loss of Kevin Pietersen has jabbed Delhi in the guts. Suddenly the big man is being missed, not being rejected (by England).
Suresh Raina raises the bat after reaching another IPL half-century for the Chennai Super Kings. Image courtesy to BCCI.
