IPL 2020 27th Match: Mumbai Indians beat Delhi Capitals.

While T20 is a small margin format, Delhi Capitals have made to feel how it can leave a carefully constructed structure shaky by removing even one link. In bowling, the table-toppers and champions Mumbai Indians (No. 2 in the table) seemed well-matched.

Still, the injury of Rishabh Pant meant that Alex Carey had to come in to take up maintenance duties as the fourth foreign player. Shimron Hetmyer was left out, eliminating two of the 11 power-hitters, because Ajinkya Rahane had a game.

He was running out in a mix-up with Shikhar Dhawan just as Capitals, opting to bat, was changing gears through Marcus Stoinis.

The opener was 69 not out, but the accuracy saw 18 deliveries of MI bowlers and the unwillingness of DC batsmen to bludgeon shots, go without a boundary in the final process. That left just 162/4 for DC defending, not much even on a slow Abu Dhabi pitch.

With the job of taming MI’s stable batting line-up, it left their flexible bowling attack. In the end, they were carried to 166/5 in 19.4 overs by MI’s power hits. With a more substantial net run rate, MI displaced DC at the head of the table.

A by-play was how it would be done by the master, MI skipper Rohit Sharma, and rising star, DC captain Shreyas Iyer. Sharma dropped to a slow pitch, dragging Axar Patel out early. Iyer, too, fell to spin, picked off the clever Krunal Pandya, but only after the charm of orthodox batting in T20 had been underlined again.

Quinton de Kock did not hold back, igniting powerful shots to give MI a fine start, hitting 33 balls (53-36b, 4×4, 3×6) of his IPL 2020 second fifty. R Ashwin skied to deep midwicket, having passed over after Suryakumar Yadav had dropped the bowler.

Hitting his second fifty in a row, Yadav cashed in. However, lofted shots were De Kock’s road to the fence, Powerful cuts and sweeps. Kagiso Rabada captured Yadav and Stoinis had Hardik Pandya for just a duck. Even though DC managed to hold Pollard in check and Anrich Nortje gave away only three runs in the 19th, Ishan Kishen’s 28 pushed MI closer, and MI knocked off the last seven runs with two balls remaining.