Dubai: Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) cruised to a 5-wicket win over Delhi Capitals (DC) in the 38th match of IPL 2020 on Tuesday (October 20) at the Dubai International Stadium.
Opting to bat first, Delhi Capitals got off to a good start with the openers Prithvi Shaw and Shikhar Dhawan scoring 13 runs in the first over. Dhawan bludgeoned the KXIP bowling attack with smashing boundaries at regular intervals. Prithvi Shaw (7 off 11 balls) and captain Shreyas Iyer (14 off 12 balls) on 73 were returned to the pavilion. Shikhar Dhawan (106 off 61 balls) scored his second consecutive century against the Kings XI Punjab taking his team to post a target of 165 runs for Punjab. For Punjab, Mohammad Shami picked up most (2) wickets, while James Neesham, Murugan Ashwin and Glenn Maxwell scalped one wicket each.
In reply, Gayle and Rahul had a poor start and had lost 3 wickets in the power-play. Captain Lokesh Rahul (15 off 11 balls), Chris Gayle (29 of 13 balls) and Mayank Agarwal (5 off 9 balls) were dismissed. Nonetheless, KXIP’s middle-order finally stood up as Nicholas Pooran’s counterattacking 53 off 28 balls along with Glenn Maxwell’s much-improved show in the middle (32 off 24 balls) kept Punjab alive in the run-chase. For Delhi, Kagiso Rabada took 2 wickets, Axar Patel and Ravichandran Ashwin picked up one wicket each.
The victory was also KXIP’s third straight win in the tournament, with all three incidentally coming against the top 3 teams in the points table.