Supergiants bowlers dent Daredevils' playoff push

Rising Pune Supergiants 76 for 1 (Rahane 42*, Khawaja 19) beat Delhi Daredevils 121 for 6 (Nair 41, Morris 38*, Dinda 3-20, Zampa 3-21) by 19 runs (D/L method)
Scorecard and ball-by-ball details

Rising Pune Supergiants completed the double over Delhi Daredevils whose chances of making the playoffs received a jolt with a 19-run loss via D/L method in Visakhapatnam. Daredevils can still qualify for the playoffs with 14 or 16 points, but their net rate of -0.125 means they may need to win by a substantial margin in their remaining two games.

Fast bowler Ashok Dinda knocked over the Daredevils openers within five overs, before R Ashwin and Adam Zampa found sharp turn to smother Daredevils to 121 for 6.

Karun Nair, who showed considerable application to top score with 41, later said that his team was 25-30 runs short. Rain handed Daredevils two reprieves in their defence, before the game was called off by midnight. Ajinkya Rahane's steady 42 not out steered Supergiants ahead in their chase and helped drag the side off the bottom of the table.

The pitch on Tuesday was the same one used for the last two matches in Visakhapatnam. The conditions - both overhead and underfoot - and Supergiants' improved fielding offered no breathing room for Daredevils until Morris blazed away. He struck the first six of the match in the final over of Daredevils' innings and capped an otherwise sluggish innings with another muscled six over midwicket. But the game was Supergiants' after they had kept Daredevils to 28 for 2, their third sub-30 score in the Powerplay this season.

Dinda got his first ball to swing prodigiously and rapped Quinton de Kock's pad with an inducker. That was heading down leg, but Dinda had de Kock lbw for 2 with a similar ball in his second over. Dinda then prolonged the lean patch of the returning Shreyas Iyer when he bounced the opener out for his fifth single-digit score in six matches in IPL 2016.

Nair began fluently with drives and pulls against the seamers before the advent of spin restored Supergiants' ascendancy. Zampa worked Sanju Samson over, having him stumped with a perfect legbreak that followed a brace of skiddy, quicker balls. He went on to dismiss Rishabh Pant and Nair in his next two overs. Daredevils were reduced to 70 for 5 in 14.3 overs.

Ashwin, who was introduced in the 12th over, sent down an uninterrupted spell that read: 4-0-23-0. JP Duminy hung on for a run-a-ball 14 before he scooped Dinda to short fine leg.

Morris mowed six boundaries, including two sixes and two fours off the last four balls of the innings, to finish with an unbeaten 38 off 20 balls.

Supergiants opener Usman Khawaja threw away another bright start when he sliced Morris to backward point for 19 off 13 balls, but Rahane gave the chase substance with three off-driven fours and an upper cut off a Nathan Coulter-Nile bouncer. A top-edge off another hurrying bouncer from the Australia fast bowler detached George Bailey's helmet before rain forced a delay of nearly an hour. Supergiants needed 65 off 70 balls when play resumed at 11.30pm and Bailey shook off the blow by getting on top of another lifting ball and whipping past midwicket.

Sixteen balls after the first interruption, rain made another appearance. This spell brought an end to the game.