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The Delhi Daredevils start the tournament where they left in the IPL 2009 league stage as they secured their first win of the tournament thanks to a fantastic performance by the leader of the Daredevil pace attack Dirk Nannes and a great innings of 72 by the captain Gauti himself.
Gauti won the toss earlier on and chose to bowl without hesitating. This hardly came as surprise after seeing their past record while chasing. Delhi played their expected li, but had to replace Ashish Nehra with Yo Mahesh, who bowled decently in the first season. They went in with the usual AB De Villiers and Dilshan along with Maharoof and Nannes as their foreign players.
Delhi bowled well in the first few overs as Nannes bowled a tight spell and Maharoof claimed Bisla's wicket. In his 3rd over, Maharoof got Sangakara and Yuvi as well with Gauti taking a good catch running backwards. Sangwan in his 2nd over showed why the Daredevils persisted with him. He claimed Jayawardene's wicket as Kings XI struggled at 44/4 in the 7th. KXIP required a good partnership to set up a respectable total in their opening fixture, and that isexactly what they gotfrom all rounder Irfan Pathan and opener Ravi Bopara. They contributed 60 runs in just more than 7 overs as Bopara smashed his half century. Daredevils struck thrice in 3 overs as Mishra quickly gets rid of out of form Mohammad Kaif and Yo Mahesh of Bopara for a well made 56. Sreesanth ends the innings by smashing a few balls for fours. KXIP end their innings at 142/9.
Delhi couldn't have asked for a better bowling display. What they didn't want is a top order collapse as they were playing a weak lower-middle order. That's exactly what they didn't get. Sehwag, after hitting a couple of boundaries, was dismissed by Sreesanth in the 2nd over. Dilshan followed with a duck. Gambhir and AB looked to settle the innings as they played quiet cricket for a couple of overs, though for the dardevils, even quiet cricket can't be less than 6 runs an over. AB got run out the 8th over after diving full length trying to get in. Good throw by Jayawardene. Don't know why he didn't look convinced though..
Dinesh Karthik stepped in and he along with Gambhir played a very quiet couple of overs after which Karthik smashed 3 fours in Piyush Chawla's over. However, the very next over, Delhi suffer the 2nd run out of their innings in the form of Dinesh Karthik. Daredevils were in a tight situation at 79/4 with no batsman but Mithun to follow.
Mithun and Gambhir ensured that nobody else from their team was required to anything out of the ordinary to get a win. Even a tight bowling display by Yuvraj couldn't stop Gauti getting his first win int the IPL as captain. Unfortunately though, he couldn't finish the job as he got out for a brilliant 72 with Delhi needing just 3 runs to win. Manhas hit the winning runs off the second last delivery of the match to secure Daredevil's first 2 points on the table.
Man of the match was none other than Gauti for his brilliant knock of 72 in just 54 balls. Delhi are the team to beat at the moment.
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