Delhi Capitals

It's extremely clear that Punjab's batting approach, as seen by the batters assembled by them ahead of IPL 2022 has been built on one theory: To go all-out by looking to hit boundaries all the time. The approach makes their batting order look thrilling when every batter in the line-up comes to the boundary-hitting party when they chased down 206 against Royal Challengers Bangalore where no batter reached fifty but everyone contributed enough to secure a win in their opening match of the tournament apart from posting totals of 198, 189 and 180.

The spark of motivation for Delhi came from head coach Ricky Ponting's words, which fired the side to thrash Punjab Kings by nine wickets in an all-round show and climb to number six on the points table. In the post-match virtual press conference, left-arm spin all-rounder Axar Patel revealed how Ponting's speech brought the best out of Delhi.

In a one-sided thriller, Delhi Capitals (DC) on Wednesday crushed Punjab Kings (PBKS) by 9 wickets. DC showed an impressive performance with both bat and the bowl. DC's net run rate also improved after this match.

At 33/0 in 3.3 overs, Punjab were well on their way to prove Simon Doull's prediction of a score of 180-190 correct from the pre-match pitch report. But everything changed when Delhi Capitals' skipper Rishabh Pant brought on Lalit Yadav's off-spin, his sixth bowling option, in the fourth over.

Rabada, who had dismissed Williamson for just 3 off 9 balls to give PBKS hope to defend the total early on, said, "I think we're just batting well in patches. We lost early wickets. Livi (Livingstone) brought us back. If you see, we went from around 60/4 to about 130/4 in the middle if I'm not mistaken.

Chasing 190 for victory after Glenn Maxwell (55) and Dinesh Karthik (66 not out) had put RCB in a position of strength, DC's Prithvi Shaw had one of those bad outings, losing his wicket on 16. Mitchell Marsh, playing his opening game of the season for DC, wasn't quite in his elements, getting dismissed for 14 as the pressure to maintain a healthy run-rate fell on Warner.

RCB, who is sixth in the points table, will lock horns with Delhi Capitals on Saturday. Kohli on the eve of the match shared a picture from the nets session in which he can be seen training hard for the game. "If you're immersed in the joy of doing what you love, everything else is irrelevant," Kohli captioned the post on the KOO app.

Kuldeep, who grabbed four wickets for 35 runs as Delhi Capitals restricted the two-time IPL champions to 171 in 19.4 overs in the chase of a mammoth 215, said that relentless pressure in powerplay by the quicks was bearing fruit. While Bangladesh's Mustafizur Rahman returned an economical spell, Khaleel Ahmed devastated the KKR top order with his 3/25 in four overs as DC notched their second win in four games.

On a super Sunday, we witnessed both high-scoring and low-scoring thrillers. On sunny day when many of us don't want to go anywhere, IPL made it excited for us at home. In the first match, DC defeated KKR by 44 runs. In the second match, RR defeated LSG by 3 runs. The results proved that winning the toss and choosing to bowl first no longer matters now.

After Delhi posted a gigantic 215/5 in their 20 overs, thanks to fifties from David Warner, Prithvi Shaw and some blazing knocks from captain Rishabh Pant, Axar Patel and Shardul Thakur, Kolkata needed similar knocks from their batters. But barring a 54 from captain Shreyas Iyer, there weren't many substantial contributions as Kolkata crashed to 171 all out in 19.4 overs.