DC vs KKR Live Score, IPL 2023: David Warner’s lone charge sets Delhi up for big win

Warner on 45 off 27, Salt hit a four off the first ball he faced, he is on 5 off 2.

Warner is on 45 off 25, Marsh two off seven. The DC captain has done it all thus far and DC really have a chance to boost their NRR today. They need 66 to win, with 78 balls remaining.

Warner pulls the fourth ball wide of mid-on, then he swats back the next one that is sent in short by Narine. Techincally that is a hat-trick of fours as Narine had sprayed the fourth ball wide initially.

Slog sweep over short fine leg from Warner for the third ball of the sixth. This is Sunil Narine bowling but the DC captain is taking him for runs. That is the second four of the over after the first ball had gone for a boundary as well.

Shaw chops on and so his struggles continue. It didn’t bounce as much Shaw would’ve wanted, his cut shot ends up taking the bottom edge and smashing onto the stumps.

Shaw b Varun 13 (11), 38/1 (4.3 overs)

Warner is on 25 off 15, Shaw on seven off four. Sunil Narine is set to bowl the fourth. Warner has hit five fours so far, can he get his first six of the season today?

Warner looking very good indeed. Russell bowling the third and the first legal ball, after the over started with a no ball, is sent between the bowler and mid-on. Then he smashes the next ball to the same area again.

The second ball of the first over bowled by Umesh Yadav is smashed to deep mid by Warner. Slightly short from Umesh and Warner pulls it with aplomb.

DC have a real chance at getting some sweet NRR nectar but so poor has their batting been that they might as well just decide to take it slow and get at least one win under the belt this season. In the middle are the normally dangerous but subdued for this season pair of David Warner and Prithvi Shaw.

“We bowled really well in the powerplay, got three, four wickets, I think that was game changing for us. I love bowling the quicker ones, in future too I will bowl the quicker ones to keep the batters guessing. I think we bowled well, probably this was the lowest we could restrict them to, given their line-up. I think we can chase this down.”

A dot ball off the fifth ball and then Chakravarthy is run out off the last ball and so that is where it all ends. Those three sixes made this look like a somewhat respectable total but this really should not be a difficult chase. However, Delhi Capitals have not had the best of times with the bat this season and KKR spinners can make any score look difficult. The powerplay is going to be key, if DC can do well in that period, this match might get over in about 13 overs of their innings.

Smashes the third one over deep midwicket now. Well, well, well, where is Dre Russ going with this one. 

Mukesh goes a bit too full for the second ball and Russell smashes it over midwicket. Just four more of these and KKR have something to defend.

One of those innings that is simply going nowhere but KKR’s pain is just not ending. Russell is on strike, he has dragged his bat to 19 off 25, akmost none of his shots have worked today. Wonder what he can make of this last over, Mukesh Kumar bowling it.

Russell smashes the ball through deep third. That is not where he was intending to hit it but who cares at the moment. KKR get to 105/9 at the end of the 18th

Dre Russ absolutely pummels a full length delivery from Nortje back the bowler’s way first ball of the 18th and it smashes the South African full just above the ankle. He needs some attention there, that ball looked like it was set to go past the sound barrier.

They’ve done it! Well, it is a wide delivery from Mukesh that finally gets them to three digits but hey, it is a team hundred. Only problem is that they have just one wicket left and 18 balls and the man in the middle is Andre Russell. Only not the Dre Russ who used to hit more sixes in a match than a normal batter would over the course of an entire season of the IPL, but the version who has been absolutely pinned down by bowlers today and in all matches thus far this year.

Dre Russ decides to take a single off the last ball of the previous which leads to four dot balls and a wicket. Umesh falls to Nortje, what an extraordinary disaster this innings has turned out to be for KKR.  

First Jason Roy, then Anukul Roy. Kuldeep with wickets in the fourth and fifth balls of the 15th and he is now on a hat-trick. KKR are 93/8 in 14.5 overs.

Roy is on 43 off 36 and Andre Russell is on 12 off 10. Any team would envy KKR’s position considering the fact that they have these two batters in the middle for themselves but the situation couldn’t be more different. They need a miracle partnership between Russell and Roy to put up a competitive total here.

Ishant Sharma has been subbed off and Prithvi Shaw comes in as an Impact Player. Fantastic performance from the veteran pacer today, 2/19 are the figures he ends with in his four overs.

Sunil Narine picks up deep midwicket and another one falls for KKR. Ishant draws the pull by dropping his length short, Warner makes no mistake with the straightforward catch.

Sunil Narine c Warner b Sharma 4 (6), KKR 70/6 in 11.2 overs

Rinku flicks Axar off his toes and sends the ball straight into the hands of deep square leg. KKR in a bit of a freefall at the moment.

Second over of the 10th in which Kuldeep comes in and Roy smashes it over the bowler’s head. That is a monster that has been deposited into the stand.

Fourth ball of that over and Rinku picks it up from middle and off and puts it through backward point expertly.

Mandeep makes a complete mess of an attempted ramp shot and he loses his middle stump. Axar Patel strikes.  

Mandeep Singh b Axar 12 (11), 50/4 in 8.2 overs

Mandeep crashes the third ball of the eighth high over backward square leg. KKR need so many more of those.

Another one bites the dust and this time, it is the captain. Rana has holed out at mid-on, Ishant Sharma gets a wicket. KKR are three down for a ridiculously low run rate.

Rana c Mukesh Kumar b Sharma 4 (7), KKR 32/3 in 5.2 overs

What is it with KKR and powerplays, eh? Nitish Rana is out there with four in six balls, Roy is on 20 off 18.

Edged to slips and the form batter is gone! Venkatesh had left the first ball he had faced and then he was cramped up by Nortje in the next. DC are running around, they know the value of this wicket. 

Venkatesh Iyer c Marsh b Nortje 0 (2), DC 25/2 in 3.3 overs

Top edges the pull and Liton is caught at at square leg. It was short from Mukesh, Liton just instinctively pulls at it, it was a nothing shot really and he loses his wicket for it. Another opening partnership goes down the drain for KKR.

Liton Das c Lalit Yadav b Mukesh Kumar 4 (4), KKR 15/1 in 2 over

First ball of the second over after the first went for just five runs. Roy flicks this one off his toes through deep midwicket.

Ishant pitches up the fourth ball wide outside off, Liton just gobbles up that gift, square drives it for four. That was the first ball he faced this innings.

Ishant Sharma is bowling the first over. Jason Roy and Liton Das are opening the batting for KKR. All about new beginnings today for both sides.

Jason Roy, Litton Das(w), Venkatesh Iyer, Nitish Rana(c), Mandeep Singh, Andre Russell, Rinku Singh, Sunil Narine, Kulwant Khejroliya, Umesh Yadav, Varun Chakaravarthy

David Warner(c), Philip Salt(w), Mitchell Marsh, Manish Pandey, Axar Patel, Aman Hakim Khan, Lalit Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav, Anrich Nortje, Ishant Sharma, Mukesh Kumar

“We are playing after 3 years thanks to Covid. Every thing feels new. We have four changes. Tough to remember. If we play as a unit. It should be tough to beat us.”

“We will have a bowl first. Weather being around, you don’t know what the total is going to be. We haven’t been disciplined with the ball. We have two changes.”

Well all of a sudden they decide it’s good enough for the toss to take place. David Warner calls it right and Delhi Capitals will bowl first. 

The players were inspecting the pitch while the coaches were conversing on the sidelines but hey, curb your enthusiasm because they all soon rush back as the rain picks up. That inspection? Well it has been pushed back to 8.15pm IST. 

Here we go then, the rain has paused for now and the covers are being taken off again. Officials will inspect the ground at 8pm. 

Well the covers are at the moment in a cycle of being taken off and being put back on. A slight decrease of the fall had led to the covers slowly being slid off but then clouds opened up again and they came right back on. 

That kind of day folks. The umpires aren’t satisfied and another inspection is now scheduled for 7.45pm IST. 

That is just over a minute from now. The players are warming up on the sidelines for now. 

Punjab Kings are all out for 150 while chasing a target of 175 and that means that the Royal Challengers jump up to fifth in the league table. It is finally starting to look slightly good for them.

The inspection was initially scheduled for 7pm but it has now been rescheduled to 7.15pm. Sit tight with crossed fingers. 

Parts of the city has received some respite from the scorching April heat today due to the rain but it’s not exactly good news for cricket. For now no big updates from the ground as to when toss will take place. 

This is what Aaron Finch had to say about the pitch: “Looks like a very good surface, it’s a bit dry underneath. There shouldn’t be a huge amount of spin, particularly later in the day. The ball can swing a little early on in the powerplay if it’s pitched in the right areas. Once the batters get past those conditions, they can score big.”

The covers are still on at the Arun Jaitley Stadium due to some surprise drizzless. Toss could be slightly delayed today. 

David Warner has 228 runs this season but it has come at a strike rate of just 116.92. But this could be a fixture where he can look to give that rather unflattering statistic a jump, as he strikes at 144.62 against Umesh Yadav, at 153.04 against Sunil Narine and at 218.18 against Andre Russell. Umesh, however, has dismissed him five times in 65 balls.

Since 2019, teams batting second in the IPL have been more successful at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, winning 10 out of 13 games. The weather is expected to be fine for the duration of the game.

KKR have lost most wickets in the powerplay and have not scored a single six in this phase. In fact, so acute have their batting failures been that the next best score in their previous against Mumbai Indians after Venkatesh Iyer’s 104 was Andre Russell’s 21.

It might be encouraging and concerning at the same time for KKR fans that their only two victories have come thanks to a pair of completely freakish innings. The first one was Shardul Thakur just smashing the living daylights out of the RCB bowlers to score 68 off 29 balls. Then came Rinku Singh helping KKR chase down 29 runs in the last over by smashing five sixes off the last five balls against champions Gujarat Titans. The concerning part would be that KKR have had to depend on these extremeties to take them over the line and even a century wasn’t enough in one of the games. 

Venkatesh Iyer has not bowled a single ball this season and he spoke about the fact that the new impact player rule will lead to all-rounders bowling less, as did MS Dhoni earlier in the season. “Honestly, with the coming of the Impact Player rule, the number of overs an all-rounder is bowling has dropped down drastically. Obviously, if a team has a specialist bowler as their sixth bowler and then they don’t want to try their all-rounder. This is what the Impact Player rule has brought. It has lessened the utility of all-rounders,” he said.  

David Warner has 1018 runs in 26 innings against KKR, at a strike rate of 145.64. Two of Warner’s four IPL hundreds have come against them.

Venkatesh Iyer became the first KKR batter since Brendon McCullum in the first ever IPL match to score a century in their previous match. He smashed 104 in 51 balls in a truly sensational display of T20. It is not often that you see centuries in losing causes in T20s but that is exactly what happened as KKR could only score 185/6. Mumbai Indians chased that down with five wickets and 14 balls in hand. 

Yes, DC have been missing some batters this season, even amongst those who are physically present for them but absent in the runs column, but this is about literally missing bats. According to a report in the Indian Express a total of 16 bats, in addition to other equipment like shoes, pads, thigh pads and gloves, were missing fter they returned to Delhi from Bengaluru, where they played RCB on April 15. The players found out about the missing gear after flying back to Delhi on Sunday and having their kits delivered to their team hotel. Talk about a troubled season. 

Rahmanullah Gurbaz(w), N Jagadeesan, Venkatesh Iyer, Nitish Rana(c), Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Shardul Thakur, Sunil Narine, Umesh Yadav, Lockie Ferguson, Varun Chakaravarthy, Suyash Sharma, Mandeep Singh, Anukul Roy, Vaibhav Arora, David Wiese, Tim Southee, Jason Roy, Litton Das, Kulwant Khejroliya, Harshit Rana, Aarya Desai

David Warner(c), Prithvi Shaw, Mitchell Marsh, Yash Dhull, Manish Pandey, Abishek Porel(w), Axar Patel, Aman Hakim Khan, Lalit Yadav, Anrich Nortje, Kuldeep Yadav, Mustafizur Rahman, Mukesh Kumar, Sarfaraz Khan, Chetan Sakariya, Praveen Dubey, Rilee Rossouw, Rovman Powell, Khaleel Ahmed, Ishant Sharma, Lungi Ngidi, Philip Salt, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Ripal Patel, Vicky Ostwal

“Teams have come back well from this position before and we can go on and do better,” is what David Warner had to say after his team had lost a fifth match on the trot since the start of the season. This edition of the IPL has thus far been an unmitigated disaster for DC. They came into the season not knowing who their wicketkeeper would be, put in what has to be the worst fielding performance of all time in the IPL in their first match of the season and their batting have floundered from one game to the next since. Mitch Marsh and Prithvi Shaw showed a lot of promise before the start of the season but they have fallen flat while David Warner’s strike rate is a huge cause of worry. Shaw has got a highest score of 15 this year, for crying out loud. DC have also never played with the same XI even once this season and it is likely that the trend will continue in today’s game as well. Let’s see how they fair against a KKR side who have had their own fair share of issues.