DC vs MI emotional roller-coaster: Rohit consoles Bumrah, Murugan does a Kumble

Soon after Axar Patel flicked an anomalous leg-side half-volley Jasprit Bumrah and pulled off an unseemly he, Rohit Sharma walked towards his draught bowler and consoled him. Bumrah had endured such a terrible day—3.2-0-43-0 that he smiled sheepishly at his captain. He was wayward, to put it mildly, often missing his lengths and serving plenty of gift balls. Maybe, a bad day that even the greatest suffer. His eyes then wandered to Daniel Sams, Bumrah’s new-ball accomplice, whose four over cost 57 runs, including a match-losing 24-run over (eighteenth). He was draught and kept staring at the stars. Sharma shook his hands and seemed to commiserate with him. Sams kept shaking his head, unable to digest how he was plundered for these many runs—the new ball pair completing an unwanted century. Later, Sharma seemed to make some self-deprecatory joke, to lighten the gloom that had spread over the faces of his colleagues. He though could be more than used to defeats in season-openers (in fact never won the first game!).

Quick-spin Murugan
Murugan Ashwin managed to get three games last year with Punjab Kings. He picked up just a wicket and leaked nearly nine runs an over. But he didn’t sulk; rather he utilised the time mining tips from leg-spin know-it-all Anil Kumble, the coach. The veteran of 956 international scalps advised him to focus on googlies and accuracy. “He also wanted me to bowl closer to the stumps and concentrate on more over-spin,” he had said in a Punjab Kings video last year. Ashwin, for the most part of his career, would strive for precocious side-spin both ways and used to give lavish flight. But the 2022 version is different—he doesn’t turn the ball as much, bowls flatter, the turn is subtler, but he purchases more bounce and is far more accurate than he ever had been. The wicket of Tim Seifert was classical peak-Kumble double-bluff. He set him up with a pair of leg-breaks, turning just a shade and bouncing quite generously from a spinner’s good length. He thus pushed him to the back-foot, made before he slipped in a brisker, fuller googly that burst through the gap between his bat and pad to crash onto the stumps. In identical fashion, he outfoxed Prithvi Shaw, but for an inside edge that evaded the stumps. There were other close shaves too in his spell that read 4-0-14-2, and already the rival teams would have begun dissecting his googlies.

WHAT A CATCH! 😲
TIM SEIFERT, TAKE A BOW! 🙌#IPL2022 #YehHaiNayiDilli #DCvMI #DCvsMI pic.twitter.com/g9PPLHE7gC
— Cricket Spectacle 🏏 (@CricketSpectac1) March 27, 2022
Seifert on the rebound
Tim Seifert endured a frustrating debut season in the league last year. He spent most of the time warming the benches of Kolkata Knight Riders, got just a game, and when the India leg of the league was cancelled midway through the edition due to the pandemic, he could not board the evacuation flight back home to New Zealand as he returned positive a day before the flight, which was to fly two days before he tested negative. Followed days of fear and agony, as he was room-bound until he tested negative again. “The world kind of stops a little bit. I just couldn’t really think what was next. And that was the scary part of it. You hear about the bad things, and I thought that was going to happen to me,” he told stuff.co.nz. Worse, he was supposed to get married in two months too. “Sort of a nightmare, it was,” he said. This edition, though, had begun auspiciously for him—he got a game straight away and made an instant impression plucking a blinder to grab Kieron Pollard’s wicket at short square-leg. The ball screamed off Pollard’s bat, as when he middles it, and it flew so fast that it seemed to evade Seifert. But he arched back and snaffled the ball after it was past him, fully air-borne. A gravity-defying grab from the Gibbs-Rhodes manual.

Kuldeeeeeeeeeeeeppppppppp 🔥🔥🔥 @imkuldeep18 💪 #IPL2022
— Yuzvendra Chahal (@yuzi_chahal) March 27, 2022
 
The Yadav roar
The usually-restrained Kuldeep Yadav let out a ripping roar after he dismissed Rohit Sharma. The ball was far from spectacular — unlike the many gems he has produced (Babar Azam in World Cup for one). The ball was on the shorter side, one Sharma would usually ferry to the roof of the Brabourne Stadium. But it came slower, as if dulled the pitch, did not turn as much as Sharma had judged and seemed to stop at him a bit, denying Sharma off any power. Then, it’s not about how Sharma missed (rarely ever) a pull shot, but how Yadav celebrated and what the wicket might have meant for him. He stood in the scream-roar pose for a few seconds, before he began punching and swiping the air and was soon swarmed his teammates. Not just that he had provided his team an early breakthrough, but was a release of all the angst that had piled up in him in the last 15 months. From India’s No 1 bowler in overseas Test matches, he had slipped into anonymity, an afterthought for his ex-franchisee KKR and the second-choice for his domestic side (Uttar Pradesh). His control had gone off-kilter, his variations had dwindled, his morale seemed puncture. But the redeeming moment perhaps came when he nabbed Sharma’s wicket. The one confidence-shot he might have been desperately searching for. And he let the world know how it meant to him.
DC second thoughts
After their very first power play of the IPL 15, Delhi Capitals might be having second thoughts about their auction pickings. Mumbai Indians were 53/0 in 6 overs and their openers Rohit Sharma and Ishan Kishan were barely beaten the DC bowlers. The track was flat, there was nothing of pacers but still the DC decision-makers might be revisiting their pre-season selection decision. They had spent close to Rs 17 crore to sign up Shardul Thakur, Khaleel Ahmed and Kamlesh Nagarkoti and the first power-play return of investment wasn’t great. For about a crore less, MI had snapped up Ishan Kishan and the young opener hadn’t disappointed them.
Dejected Nagarkoti
Was it Kamlesh Nagarkoti chasing the ball, or the ball chasing the young fast bowler? In the first three overs, he was in the television frame almost every single frame, hurling and flinging his body around. He stopped a brace of boundaries too—one inside the ring and another near the midwicket ropes when he ran nearly 15 yards, slid onto the grass and snatched the ball from underneath the feet of a rushing Tymal Mills. A pleased captain Rishabh Pant shrieked: Bahut acha, bahut acha (very good, very good)…” So impressed that he decided to give him a go with the ball. Nagarkoti galloped in, marked his run-up and seemed restlessly energetic. His enthusiasm was soon to fade through. Rohit Sharma cut his first ball, a short-of-length loosener for a four, the third was swivel-pulled for a four over fine leg, the fourth was so wide that Pant had to stretch his body, and Ishan Kishan shellacked the last ball behind point. Nagarkoti stood dejected in his follow-through, seemingly sapped off all his energy and had to be dragged back to the outpost in the deep. The ball, though, kept following him, though he greeted those with considerably less enthusiasm.