After getting hammered in their opening games, both Delhi Daredevils and Mumbai Indians will look to make amends when they play take the field in their respective games on Saturday.
Mumbai, who lost to the Knight Riders in the opening game, play Royal Challengers who thrashed the Daredevils by eight wickets on Thursday.
The win over DD marked a comeback for Yuvraj Singh and the southpaw will look to get the better of Lasith Malinga. The Sri Lankan pacer’s outstanding bowlingt ensured a poor World T20 final for Yuvraj, who just couldn’t get going.
The Lankan, now leading the MI attack will look to throttle the Virat-Yuvraj duo again as he did in the final. RCB did not have the services of Chris Gayle on Thursday but it hardly made any impact on RCB’s chances.
The decision of RCB, who had retained big boys Kohli, Gayle and AB de Villiers for the seventh edition, to shell out a whopping 114 crore for Yuvraj bore fruit as the left-hander justified his price tag with the brilliant half-century.
Bowling a weak link
RCB’s bowling was considered their weak link but against the Daredevils, their bowlers did just enough to restrict the opponents to a modest 145 for four.
Bowling a weak link
RCB’s bowling was considered their weak link but against the Daredevils, their bowlers did just enough to restrict the opponents to a modest 145 for four.
The star of the day was young leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal, who was adjudged man-of-the-match for his spell of 4-0-18-1.
In the event of Pietersen missing out on another game, the Daredevils will again have to rely heavily on their two other overseas stars, J P Duminy and Ross Taylor.
Both batted beautifully in their opening game and revived the team from a tottering 17 for three to 145 for four in 20 overs.
After a miserable outing against RCB, Mayank Agarwal, Dinesh Karthik, who led the side in the absence of Pietersen, and Manoj Tiwary will need to pull their socks.
Bowling was also a matter of worry, especially the spinners, with both left-armer Shahbaz Nadeem and leggie Rahul Sharma going for runs.