Sameer Rizvi made light work of a slow pitch with a dazzling 90 from just 51 balls to lead the Delhi Capitals to an impressive six-wicket victory against the Mumbai Indians in their Tata IPL match at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi on Saturday afternoon.
Requiring just 163 for victory Delhi wobbled to 73-3 before the fourth wicket partnership shot past 50 with David Miller’s contribution, remarkably, just a single run as the Capitals were put firmly back on course for victory.
Sri Lankan Pathum Nissanka scored a cultured 44 from 30 balls at the top of the order before top edging a pull against left arm spinner Mitchell Santner but there was no stopping the extraordinary hitting of right hander Rizvi who hammered seven sixes and seven fours.
Straight driving was the 22-year-old’s forte but he also swept and cut the spinners and drove one maximum gloriously over extra cover.
Mumbai never came to terms with the pitch after being asked to bat first with Rohit Sharma (35 from 26 balls) slapping left arm spinner Axar Patel to extra cover and stand-in captain Suryakumar Yadav being trapped lbw by Lungi Ngidi’s slower ball for 51 from 36 with three fours and two sixes. Ngidi continued his strong start to the tournament with 4-0-34-1.
Corbin Bosch (11*) took Hardik Pandya’s place in the starting XI following illness to the regular skipper and whacked two of the four balls he faced to the boundary but the Mumbai total always looked 15-20 runs short of par with captain Axar styling with figures of 4-0-22-1.
Seamer Mukesh Kumar (3-0-26-2) claimed two wickets in the Power Play starting with a sliced drive to mid off from Ryan Rickelton who departed for nine.
Rizvi’s magnificent innings ended with a drive to long off against Bosch but the stand of 78 had all but won the game. So dominant was he that Miller’s contribution was just 11. But Miller finished with an unbeaten21 from 18 balls with four fours to win the game in the company of countryman Tristan Stubbs with 11 balls to spare.
DELHI CAPITALS: KL Rahul (wkt), Pathum Nissanka, Nitish Rana, Axar Patel (captain), Tristan Stubbs, David Miller, Vipraj Nigam, Lungi Ngidi, Kuldeep Yadav, T Natarajan, Mukesh Kumar
MUMBAI INDIANS: Rohit Sharma, Ryan Rickelton (wkt), Tilak Varma, Suryakumar Yadav (captain), Naman Dhir, Sherfane Rutherford, Mitchell Santner, Corbin Bosch, Shardul Thakur, Deepak Chahar, Jasprit Bumrah