Despite several commendable individual performances, we fell marginally short in our first home game in Delhi against the Mumbai Indians on Sunday. The visitors won the game by 12 runs in a closely contested and high-intensity match.
Karun Nair, on his return to the TATA IPL for the first time since 2022, starred with a sensational 89 off 40 balls. He led the fightback following an early setback in the run chase, but a succession of wickets ultimately hindered the team’s progress. While the result did not favour us, Karun’s exceptional innings was a significant positive to take forward.
Earlier in the day, Axar Patel won the toss and chose to field first. Rohit Sharma and Ryan Rickleton gave MI a terrific start, but Vipraj Nigam dismissed Rohit to pull things back in our favour. A couple of overs later, Kuldeep Yadav joined the party and sent back Rickleton.
Suryakumar Yadav and Tilak Verma put up another stand to shift the momentum. Naman Dhir too chipped in with a vital contribution for them as Mumbai Indians finished with 205/5 in 20 overs.
In the run chase, we lost Jake Fraser-McGurk early on, but Karun Nair walked in as the Impact Sub and got going immediately. He took on the bowlers with some delightful drives and made full use of the field restrictions.
In the sixth over, he smashed 18 runs off Jasprit Bumrah to bring up a half-century in only 22 balls. Abishek Porel too chipped in with the odd boundary as the partnership went past the 100-mark in no time. The duo put up a 119-run stand, which ended with Porel’s wicket.
Karun seemed all set for a ton, but fell 11 runs short with Mitchell Santner getting his wicket. Axar Patel and KL Rahul fell in quick succession after that, which put the pressure right back on us heading into the final few overs.
Ashutosh Sharma and Vipraj Nigam struck a few boundaries to keep us alive, but a few unfortunate run-outs meant we fell short of our target, suffering our first defeat of the season.
Next up, we face the Rajasthan Royals on April 16 at the Kotla.
Brief Scores
Mumbai Indians 205/5 in 20 overs (Tilak Verma 59; Kuldeep Yadav 2/23, Vipraj Nigam 2/41) beat Delhi Capitals 193 in 19 overs (Karun Nair 89; Karn Sharma 3/36)
Player of the match: Karn Sharma
