The team of the Delhi Daredevils which seemed to take on the Kolkata Knight Riders after a not-very-big score was allowed to be made, instead fell flat with their performance in batting. The match was won by the Kolkata Knight Riders by 23 runs and Shoaib Akhtar was awarded the man of the match for his great bowling attack.
The Kolkata team batted first and it did not seem from their performance that winning would come so easy. The opener Salman Butt was good at his stroke play and he comfortably scored 48 runs off 44 balls. The other opener however, Chopra could not do that well and was dismissed at just 13 runs off 17 balls. Ganguly, the skipper could not do very well either with his 7 runs. Hussey however handled the situation well for some time and was dismissed only after he had made 31 runs. The lower order of the team however very disappointing as no one could score good runs. The target made by the team was 133 runs.
The Delhi team had high hopes but these were shattered by the new man in, Shoaib who made his debut today in the IPL after long controversies and delay. The complete top order of the Delhi team was brought to shambles by this man alone. Gambhir, Sehwag, Villiers and Tiwary were all dismissed by Akhtar by the end of the fifth over. Only Mishra and Dilshan could score runs in the double figures and made 31 and 25 respectively. The lower order too gave in to the other bowlers of the Kolkata team. A total of only 110 runs could be made by the Delhi Daredevils team leaving the Kolkata higher on the points table. Shoaib with his magical figures of 3-0-11-4 was deservingly awarded in the match and responsible greatly for the victory of Kolkata.
