IPL: LSG play-off hopes fade as DC young heroes keep them breathing

NEW DELHI: Delhi Capitals’ next generation of batters are here. With Jake Fraser-McGurk and Tristan Stubbs bringing intimidating hitting through the second half of the IPL, Abhishek Porel on Tuesday showed he has brought in consistency to his elegant strokeplay.
Against a rather thoughtful Lucknow Super Giants bowling attack on a tiring Kotla track, Porel made up for McGurk’s rare failure with a sublime 33-ball 58 to lay the foundation for the hulk-like Stubbs to close the innings with an unbeaten 25-ball 57 as Capitals posted 208/4.
The maturity of the two batters in their early 20s trumped the experienced LSG top order as Capitals finished the league stage with a 19-run win and 14 points.
While defending the total, the experience of Ishant Sharma (3/34) and Kuldeep Yadav (1/33) knocked the wind out of the LSG batting despite Nicholas Pooran’s ominous knock of 27-ball 61, Arshad Khan’s late charge of unbeaten 58 off 33 to take LSG to 189/9 and Capitals’ customary ordinary catching abilities.
As It Happened
Tuesday’s result, however, has placed both teams on the verge of falling short of making it to the playoffs.
Capitals’ have been spoilt by McGurk’s onslaught up front in an innings. When the maverick opener was thoughtfully dismissed for a duck at long on off the second ball of the innings bowled by left-arm seamer Arshad Khan, it seemed Capitals could fall behind on a surface that has regularly produced scores of well above 200 this year.
But Porel raised his hand this time to calm the Capitals dugout before Stubbs allayed all fears of a possible collapse and powerfully finish the innings on a high.
Porel isn’t anything like McGurk’s muscle game. It was all timing and match awareness that saw Porel take Capitals 73/1 at the end of the powerplay. By the time he reached his 50 off just 21 balls, he had already hit four sixes and five boundaries. The pitch wasn’t as flat as it has been here this IPL. The cutters into pitch stopped on the batters as Shai Hope had to really wait to pick his deliveries to go big.
Perhaps, it was the heat coupled with some shrewd bowling into pitch by Ravi Bishnoi that put the brakes on the Capitals charge. Porel seemed to be running out of gas even as his skipper Rishabh Pant was taking his time to score 33 off 23.
Once Porel was dismissed caught at deep mid-wicket, it looked like Bishnoi and left-arm pacer Mohsin Khan had worked out a way to apply the choke with spells of 1/26 and 0/29 respectively.
This is where Stubbs displayed his rapid evolution as a batter. He batted just 25 balls and hit four sixes and three boundaries. But the innings was well thought out.
Understanding that going after spin straightaway isn’t his strongest game, he bided his time against the Bishnoi by knocking him into the gaps for singles. But he unleashed his fury at the back end of the innings.