Abhishek Sharma butchered a listless Delhi Capitals into submission with a brilliant 68-ball 135 not out as Sunrisers Hyderabad cantered to an easy 47-run victory in an IPL match here on Tuesday.
On a placid Uppal track, Abhishek scythed through Delhi bowling attack with 10 sixes and as many boundaries in Sunrisers' mammoth score of 242 for 2.
The chase was out of question but Sri Lankan Eshan Malinga (4/32 in 4 overs) and Sakib Hussain (1/29 in 4 overs) scripted a middle-order collapse with DC reduced to 107 for 4 from a comfortable 107 for 1. DC never recovered from thereon.
In the end, Axar Patel's men managed only 195 for 9 to lose the game comprehensively as SRH consolidated their position in the points table moving up to third place.
The match will be remembered for some serious tactical mistakes made by the DC 'Brains Bank' comprising Director of Cricket Venugopal Rao, head coach Hemang Badani and skipper Axar.
Using a part-time off-spinner Nitish Rana's (0/55 in 4 overs) full quota simply because the top three of SRH consists of southpaws beggared belief.
Equally baffling was frontline spinners Axar (1/23 in 2 overs) and Kuldeep Yadav (0/30 in 2 overs) only bowled half their quota of overs trying to escape the onslaught from Abhishek.
Three pacers Mukesh Kumar (0/53), Lungi Ngidi (0/44) and T Natarajan (0/40) were also rendered ineffective.
On the other hand, SRH pacers led by Malinga and Hussain used clever variations of pace-on and pace-off deliveries to get wickets at regular intervals save Rana's half-century which was pale in comparison to Abhishek's innings.
Even with a relatively off-colour Travis Head (37 off 26 balls), Abhishek added 97 for the opening stand. Then, skipper Ishan Kishan (25 off 13 balls) joined the party, adding another 79 runs for the second wicket in just 5.5 overs to create a beautiful launchpad for the final assault.
Towards the end as Abhishek seemed a bit tired as strike-rate dropped a touch below 200, Heinrich Klaasen chanced his arms to hit a quickfire 37 not out off 13 balls.
Delhi Capitals' ploy of starting with an off-spinner, that too a mediocre part-timer like Rana backfired badly as he was given four overs in which he was hit for half a dozen sixes -- all off left-handed batters.
The DC coaching staff headlined by Venugopal, Badani have not exactly been at their tactical best throughout the tournament and Tuesday was one such occasion.
Rana bowled a tidy first over but then the second went for 20 and after strategic time-out, he was again given two more overs out of which one went for 23.
Even skipper Axar will have some answering to do as to why he as a frontline spinner didn't complete his quota and why Kuldeep was not trusted after one bad over (22 runs) but someone like Rana was persisted with.
In all, the two and half spinners (half being Rana) that DC bowled with went for 108 runs in their cumulative eight overs.
The Powerplay overs yielded 67 but where DC completely lost the plot was during the middle phase between overs 7 to 15 in which 116 runs came, which is unacceptable.
The hallmark of Abhishek's innings was how he adjusted the downswing of his bat depending on the bowlers -- especially Ngidi, whom he played late and in-front. It seemed like Abhishek was in a mood to exhibit his range-hitting skills as most of his sixes were hit in-front of the wicket.
It was a slightly slower century by his standards. Even then, Abhishek managed a strike-rate northwards of 200 by completing his century of 47 balls. But he didn't stop there as Sunrisers Hyderabad reached a score for which a chase looks quite improbable with the kind of batting depth that DC have.
