Mumbai: Ajinkya Rahane and Karun Nair helped Rajasthan Royals register their sixth win of the season, beating Delhi Daredevils by 14 runs in the Indian Premier League at the Brabourne Stadium here on Sunday.
Riding on a 113-run partnership by Rahane (91 in 54 balls) and Nair (61 from 38) for the second wicket, the Royals posted a challenging 189/2 in 20 overs.
In reply, Daredevils were never close to matching the skills displayed by Royals and eventually ended their innings at 175/7 in 20 overs. Skipper J.P. Duminy top scored with 56 runs off 39 balls.
It was Delhi’s fifth loss in the tournament.
Losing the toss and put into bat, Rajasthan got off to a modest start, with openers Rahane and Shane Watson taking time to get settled in the middle.
But after a couple of overs they took on the Daredevils bowling, piling on the first 50 in 6.2 overs.
Just as skipper Watson was looking to get settled, a surprising delivery by Angelo Mathews saw him caught behind for 21 off 24 balls.
Rahane took the reins from there on to strike the ball to all parts.
Incoming batsman Nair gave good company to Rahane.
The duo took advantage of some poor fielding to put 100 runs on the board in the 14th over.
Rahane struck nine fours and three sixes, whereas his partner Nair hit six boundaries and two sixes.
The duo brought up their 100-run partnership for the second wicket in just 63 balls.
With his splendid innings, Rahane replaced Sunrisers Hyderabad skipper David Warner as the IPL leading run scorer with 430.
Daredevils dropped three catches in the innings. Gurinder Sandhu and Saurabh Tiwary dropped Rahane and Nair respectively and later on Amit Mishra and Zaheer Khan collided and dropped Rahane.
For Delhi, Mathews was the pick of the bowlers, picking up one wicket and finishing with figures of 4-0-27-1 but other bowlers — Zaheer, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Mishra and Sandhu — all leaked heavy runs.
Delhi got off to the worst possible start, losing both the openers — Mayank Agarwal (11) and Shreyas Iyer (9) — within five overs.
Incoming batsman Yuvraj Singh didn’t last long, scoring just 22 off 18 balls. Mathews (16) and Kedar Jadav (11) also departed in space of two overs.
Skipper Duminy tried his best, but, looking to up the scoring rate, was caught by Dhawal Kulkarni off the bowling of James Faulkner.
With the dismissal of Duminy it looked all over for Delhi as wickets fell in clusters.
For Rajasthan, Faulkner was the pick of the bowlers picking up two wickets and finishing with figures of 4-0-22-2. Watson finished with 4-1-25-1. Dhawal Kulkarni went for runs but picked up two wickets. Stuart Binny also picked two wickets in his two overs.
