Delhi crumble on crumbling Kotla pitch

Kings XI Punjab 112 for 3 (Jayawardene 38, Collingwood 2-19) beat Delhi Daredevils 111 (Irfan 3-24, Chawla 2-16) by seven wickets

If the batsmen were looking for trouble, boy, they came to the right place. The Feroz Shah Kotla track was back to its Champions League shenanigans, and Kings XI Punjab, having seen Delhi Daredevils fail to read its nature soon enough, kept their heads in what seemed a meagre chase on paper, also keeping alive their remotest of outside chance to make it to the semis. Only 21 boundaries were hit in 38.2 overs on a pitch that offered variable bounce and appreciable turn right from the first ball, and whose slowness made it hard to time shots.

The Punjab bowlers were smart and accurate, two of Delhi's big three were consumed by silly running, the others collapsed, and hence the below-par total. While Punjab were sensible in the chase, they couldn't create a comfortable gap between their run rate and the required rate until Yuvraj Singh hit a four and a six in the 14th over.

The nature of the pitch was not so apparent in the first four overs of the afternoon. Delhi had got off to another flier when madness struck: Gautam Gambhir and David Warner were run out within three balls of each other, and only 69 runs came in 15.5 overs after that. The spinners bowled 12 overs between them for 55 runs - four of them inside the Powerplay, and Juan Theron, the specialist pace bowler, was used only for two overs, that too at the death.