After a hat-trick of losses, the Delhi Capitals finally found a win when they overpowered Rajasthan Royals by seven wickets in Jaipur on Friday.

Delhi lost the toss, but won almost everything thereafter. Mitchell Starc, playing his first match of the season, struck rhythm with a three-wicket haul and then their batters went hammer and tongs as Delhi chased down a daunting target of 226.

The top three — Pathum Nissanka (62 off 33 balls), KL Rahul (75 off 40 balls) and Nitish Rana (33 off 17 balls) — did the bulk of the scoring and they did that on a fast clip as Delhi breathed easy with their fourth win of the edition.

The 110-run opening partnership between Nissanka and Rahul laid the perfect foundation for the chase. Nissanka (six fours, three sixes) bossed initially, but once he was dismissed, Rahul (six fours, five sixes) took over with confident strokes.

Tristan Stubbs (18 not out off 11 balls) and Ashutosh Sharma (25 not out off 15 balls) played nice cameos to finish the job for Delhi.

Earlier, Starc struck in his, and the match’s, very first over when he removed Yashasvi Jaiswal. And with Kyle Jamieson getting rid of the dangerous Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Delhi were right on top of
the hosts.

The Royals, though, fought back with skipper Riyan Parag (90 off 50 balls) leading from the front. Dhruv Jurel complemented Parag with an innings of 42, while Donovan Ferreira (47 not out off 14 balls) provided the late fireworks as the Royals crossed the 200-mark.

While the batting part was done decently well, the Royals didn’t bowl that well, with spearhead Jofra Archer having an off day. It also didn’t help the Royals that captain Parag could not stay on the field for the entire innings due to cramps.

Jaiswal was the stand-in captain and he couldn’t marshall his troops to perfection as Delhi called the shots in the crucial middle overs as well.