Picture Credit: IPL/BCCI
While the Delhi Capitals vs Royal Challengers Bangalore match holds little significance as far as the Playoff qualification is concerned, both teams have been pretty consistent in the competition so far. It is for the same reason that while Delhi are at the top of the table, Bangalore are placed number three in the points table.
While Bangalore had an outside chance to push for a top-two finish had they elected to bat first and went for an extravagant win by over 160 runs, they stuck to playing orthodox cricket and chose to field first after reading the conditions and wicket. However, the Delhi openers had other plans. Both Prithvi Shaw and Shikhar Dhawan played some brilliant strokes in the powerplay to push the Bangalore side on the back foot.
However, among those that stood out was Dhawan's daring aerial flick after he came across way outside to off stump to get maximum result on the on side. Dhawan played this stroke in the fifth ball of the 9th over. Although the purple cap holder Harshal angled the delivery towards the off stump, the southpaw picked the line early, walked across his stumps to whip this stroke over the on-side fence for a six.
While there was a fielder who was interested in trying to pull that back for a while, it was too sweetly timed and just had to be a six.
Check out Dhawan's shot here:
However, eventually, it was Harshal Patel himself who got Dhawan out. In the first ball of the 11th over, he dished out his special slower delivery which foxed Dhawan. While Dhawan tried to go down the ground for a huge hit, he was undone by the lack of pace on that ball and the catch was accepted by Daniel Christian, ending Dhawan's innings of 43 from 35 balls.
By the time, the 35-year-old got out, the openers had done their job as they posted 88 runs in 61 deliveries. Since then though Delhi lost Prithvi Shaw (48 from 31) and Rishabh Pant (10 from 8) in quick succession. By the way the wicket has behaved so far, it looks more like a batting track.