Delhi Capitals skipper Rishabh Pant levelled Shikhar Dhawan’s tally of most half-centuries for the franchise with his quick-fire knock against Kolkata Knight Riders in the ongoing Indian Premier League on Wednesday.
In a losing cause, Pant’s 55 off mere 25 deliveries came out as one of the positives for DC. With this, he completed his 18th half-century for DC and became the joint second-highest fifty scorer for DC alongside Dhawan who is the current skipper of Punjab Kings.
Australia’s veteran batter David Warner has the most number of half-centuries for DC with a tally of 24.
Shreyas Iyer who now leads Kolkata Knight Riders is on the third spot with 16 fifties to his name. He is level with the iconic opener Virender Sehwag who also struck 16 fifties during his time with DC.
Pant’s 55 which was laced with four boundaries and five maximums wasn’t enough to take the hosts across the finishing line which led to DC suffering their second-biggest defeat by runs in the history of the tournament.
While Pant took the onus of scoring runs for the hosts, the ‘City of Destiny’ had already witnessed two hours of carnage, 2 hours of ruthless ball-striking and 120 minutes of torture for the Delhi Capitals (DC) bowlers as Narine (85), Raghuvanshi (54), Russell (41) and Rinku Singh’s brutal-bashing helped KKR score the second highest score in the history of the IPL – 272/7.
KKR’s herculean target of 273 turned out to be too much for DC as they gave in to the pressure and ended up suffering a 106-run defeat.
The pace duo of Mitchell Starc and Vaibhav Arora bagged two wickets each to reduce DC to 33/4 in the powerplay.
These couple of early blows derailed DC’s approach to chasing down the massive total which got more challenging with each delivery.
Eventually, the required rate turned out to be too much as they ended up suffering a 106-run defeat.
