Feature

Morris' slide, and fourteen off one ball

Plays of the day from the match between Delhi Daredevils and Kolkata Knight Riders

The other V
No one was surprised when Carlos Brathwaite hit successive fours as soon as he walked in, but perhaps they were by the direction of his shots. Brathwaite's favoured region is down the ground, but these shots came in the V behind the wicket. First up he received a gift from Umesh Yadav, a ball angling down leg side that he tickled to the fine-leg boundary. Then came a back-of-a-length ball outside off stump. Brathwaite waited, waited some more, and opened his bat face to dab it deftly between wicketkeeper and short third man.
The slide
Chris Morris had experienced a swift, figurative fall when he had batted, out for a second-ball duck in his first innings since his unbeaten 32-ball 82 against Gujarat Lions. Now, running in to bowl his first ball, he experienced a literal, and rather harrowing fall. Just as he jumped into a side-on position to get into his delivery stride, his back foot landed awkwardly, and in fact barely landed at all. He slid with the outside of his right foot dragging against the ground, and came to a rest a few feet past the bowling crease. When the non-striker Robin Uthappa came out of his crease to check if the bowler was okay, Morris showed his sense of humour was still intact, flicking the ball towards the stumps and raising an arm in a mock appeal.
Fourteen off one ball
Brathwaite's second over was going fairly okay by T20 standards - five balls, four singles, one four. The last ball was a slower one, and Suryakumar Yadav pulled for two. That should have been it, 10 off the over, but one of the Daredevils infielders had not timed his walk-in properly, and was outside the 30-yard circle when Brathwaite delivered. With only three fielders inside the circle, the umpire signalled no-ball, and then a free-hit.
Brathwaite ran in, swung his arm over, and the ball slipped out of his fingers, sliding down the leg side on the full after passing Suryakumar Yadav at chest height. Another no-ball, another free-hit, and this had screamed down the leg side too quick for the wicketkeeper to stop. Five runs came off that non-delivery. Brathwaite ran in again, and sent down a slower ball. It was a length delivery, and Suryakumar cleared his front leg, swung through the line, and launched it high over long-on.
The no-look run-out
Jason Holder was new to the crease, and facing his first ball. Chris Morris sent down a low full toss, and Holder looked to flick. He missed, and the ball hit his pad and rolled into the off side, a short distance from the pitch. Holder shot out of his crease, eyes left, searching for a ball he imagined had rolled towards square leg. He was a third of the way down the pitch when he realised the ball may have gone in another direction. By then it was too late. Morris had picked up the ball in an extension of his follow-through and set the stumps and bails flashing with his underarm flick.

Karthik Krishnaswamy is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo