AB de Villiers during his unbeaten knock of 50 on Friday

East London: AB de Villiers’ half-century powered the Delhi DareDevils to a seven-wicket victory over the Mumbai Indians in their Indian Premier League (IPL) match here on Friday.

Chasing 117 for victory, the Delhi side knocked off the required runs with seven balls to spare. The opening pair of David Warner and Gautam Gambhir began the DareDevils’ innings cautiously, playing each ball on its merit, avoiding any rash shots.

But Warner (21 off 30 balls) threw away his wicket when he charged down the track to JP Duminy, missed the flight and Pinal Shah did the rest behind stumps. Gambhir (19 off 23) soon followed his opening partner to the pavilion falling to Harbhajan Singh.

The silly dismissals put the pressure back on the Delhi side and though Tillekaratne Dilshan and De Villiers (50 ..) tried to force the pace of the game, runs trickled in ones and twos.

The Mumbai Indians slow bowlers — Duminy and Harbhajan — put the brakes on the DareDevils and what looked like an easy chase was turning out to be a difficult one. But one over from Sachin Tendulkar changed all that as De Villiers pulled him for three fours and a six over mid-wicket. That brought the Delhi side back on track. De Villiers and Dilshan (19) added 61 runs off 52 balls and by the time the Dilshan fell, only 10 more runs were needed.

Earlier, Dwayne Bravo top-scored with 35 as the Mumbai Indians were shot out for 116.

Bravo, along with Abhishek Nayar (18), put on 57 runs off 51 deliveries for the fifth wicket, which saved the Mumbai side the blushes and helped them recover from a precarious 33 for four to go past the 100-mark.

Opting to bat first, the Mumbai Indians started with Duminy (0) partnering newcomer Ronchi (0) at the expense of Sanath Jayasuriya and pushed Tendulkar down to give the middle-order some stability.

But the plan went haywire in the very first over after Australian Ronchi perished in search of a non-existent single and Duminy edged Nannes to Dinesh Karthik behind the stumps. That brought Tendulkar to the crease and he hit two well-timed boundaries but perished soon, failing to get back to the crease as Karthik knocked down the stumps.

At 30 for three, the Mumbai side were in dire straits and they were in a bigger mess when Shah (11) tried to send Rajat Bhatia (3/15) out of the park but holed out to Amit Mishra at long on.