Delhi Capitals were bossing a majority of the game when they collapsed. Rishabh Pant played a reckless stroke to trigger the collapse and this only ended when the side was shot out for 152 in 19.2 overs. A gutted Delhi Capitals captain Shreyas Iyer said that he was “speechless” after his team lost seven wickets for eight runs in their 14-run defeat to Kings XI Punjab.
DC were chasing 144 for 3 in the 17th over, chasing 167 and were subsequently bowled out for 152 in 19.2 overs. (Full scorecard)
“Really disappointing. With the way we were going, we came ball to ball and to lose from there, really disappointing. We didn’t play smart cricket and Punjab outplayed us in all the departments. They were really cool and calm in that situation. I am really speechless. It is a crucial match and losing such matches is not going to benefit us,” Iyer said after the match
“The way Ingram was going, with ball to ball, it is really difficult to see us losing wickets like that from outside and the batsmen not taking initiative to win the game. But it is good as well as it happened early in the tournament. We can correct the errors and come back strong. We didn’t bowl that well in the powerplay, they came really hard us but we defended good after that,” he further added.
The captain wants his side to remain motivated and keep looking at positives as they march ahead in the tournament.
“It is really going to be important for us to stay motivated. These are the small factors we have to work hard on. Mentally we have train ourselves on how to finish the games. We are getting good starts but need to focus on winning the games,” he said.
A delighted KXIP skipper Ravichandran Ashwin said that they were waiting for Rishabh Pant to make a mistake and cash in from thereon.
“Not may times, you defend. When Rishabh hit the six, we just needed to hang in there. Credit to Shami and Curran. We were probably 25 runs short. We backed ourselves to defend with three spinners.”