Indian Premier League: Sunrisers Hyderabad dim the lights on Delhi Daredevils

The Delhi outfit remain winless and stay bottom of the table with fourth consecutive loss but not before Hyderabad sweat it out in low-scoring clash.

File picture from last year of Dale Steyn celebrating. The Hyderabad bowler put the brakes on Delhi Daredevils early in their innings. Noah Seelam / AFP

Toss Delhi, chose to bat
Delhi Jadhav 30; Steyn 2-11, Perera 2-31, I Sharma 2-35
Hyderabad Sangakkara 28;  Nadeem 2-17, Morkel 2-27
Man of the match Amit Mishra (Hyderabad)

It was a low-scoring affair at Feroz Shah Kotla between Delhi Daredevils and Sunrisers Hyderabad on Friday.

Both sides faltered with the bat, and the packed crowd was treated to a nail-biting contest.

In the end, despite a commendable effort with the ball from Delhi, Hyderabad pulled off a three-wicket win, a result that helped them join Royal Challengers Bangalore at the top of the table.

Virender Sehwag finally made his much-awaited return to the Delhi Daredevils team, but that did little to lift the team's batting. Indeed, not much went right for Delhi against, arguably, the most balanced bowling attack of the nine teams in the fray.

Dale Steyn, Ishant Sharma, Thisara Perera, Amit Mishra and Anand Rajan kept things simple – restrictive line, smart length, occasional changes of pace. The rest was achieved by the Hyderabad fielding and the ineptitude of the Delhi batsmen.

Till Steyn uprooted Shahbaz Nadeem’s off stump, all the batsmen fell to catches. Apart from Steyn catching Jayawardene off Ishant, none of them were mistimed strokes. One of them was super – Cameron White’s diving one-handed effort at gully to send back Sehwag – while the rest showed a fielding unit at the top of its game.

In fact, the only major piece of misfielding took place on the last ball of the Delhi innings, when Mishra missed a tame flick from Umesh Yadav at short fine leg.

Not one of the Delhi top five put up a score of note and when the fifth wicket fell, the scoreboard showedd 65 from 13.3 overs. At that rate, reaching even 100 would have been a big ask, but with Irfan Pathan and Kedar Jadhav showing more sense than their more illustrious mates, the last few overs were productive.

Pathan, who spent the best part of his 30-ball stay consolidating, scored 23, while Jadhav, batting at No. 7, hit two sixes and a four in an enterprising unbeaten 30 from 20 balls.

That sensible batting was the order of the day was evident when Hyderabad came out to bat. The 115-run target was going to be challenging only if the bowlers did their job, and Jayawardene showed good captaincy skills by setting attacking fields.

He saved overs from Morne Morkel, Umesh Yadav and Pathan for the end, and after Parthiv Patel and Kumar Sangakkara had added 44 for the second wicket, the innings went off the rails.

Hyderabad slumped to 89 for 6 and when Perera fell, they needed 15 from 14 balls. Cameos from Mishra and Steyn saw them home. Delhi remain winless.

Shamya Dasgupta is an author and senior editor at Wisden India.