Delhi Daredevils does not seem to learn from their previous years. DD got it all wrong even before the toss, leaving the main batsman JP Duminy out of the playing 11. Well, they surely missed him and how. They came, they saw and they fell like nine pins.
Kolkata won the toss and put DD in to bat. DD loaded their side with all rounders, playing Pawan Negi, Carlos Braithwaite, Chris Morris and Nathan Coulter Nile in lower middle order to add some firepower to their unsure top order which consists of domestic players like Shreyas Iyer, Mayank Agarwal, Karun Nair and Sanju Samson.
They started in good fashion with their opener Mayank Agarwal hitting the first ball of the match for 4 and fellow opener Quinton De Kock taking a liking for Umesh Yadav with a boundary and six in his first over.
Delhi were 23 for no loss after 2 over and then it all began. Delhi batsmen looked in a hurry of some sorts. Highest partnership was the opening partnership worth 24 runs and the highest individual score was 17 runs for De Kock. It was more of the Delhi Dominoes playing out there, falling one after the other. It was more of disastrous batting from Delhi than anything else. No batsmen looked to apply themselves and perished trying to hit boundaries.
For Kolkata, the team looks settled already. It is moreover the same team as last year and it showed. Andre Russel and Brad Hogg bagged 3 wickets each while Hastings and Piyush Chawla shared 2 wickets apiece to send back Delhi for 98 runs. To top it all, KKR had benched players like Sunil Narine and Shakib Al Hasan and it just shows the depth and the strength of this squad.
Chasing a modest 99, KKR openers Gautam Gambhir and Robin Uthappa were up and running and looked in good rhythm.
They scored freely all around the ground and sealed the doors closed for DD with an opening partnership of 69 runs in just around 9 overs. The rest was just a formality. Manish Pandey and Gautam Gambhir completed the job without much fuss handing KKR their first win in as many matches with 9 wickets. With the top 3 getting the runs, the batting lineup of KKR looks ominous, with players like Yusuf Pathan, SK Yadav, Colin Munro and Andre Russell waiting in the wings.
Overall, the Delhi team looked completely out of sorts. The batsmen didn`t fire and the none of the bowlers looked like picking a wicket. And one major problem to address for the DD team management will be Zaheer Khan He is the captain and your main bowler but looked quite ordinary. Zaheer being the captain as well may block a promising bowler to make it to the playing eleven. It could be a double blow. But it’s a long tournament and gives ample chance for them to turn their fortune around but looking at this performance one can say, it will be an uphill task.