Delhi comes from behind to hand Punjab a fourth consecutive loss in IPL

Former IPL leader Punjab stayed fourth in the table while Delhi, which has played one more game, was seventh and still in the playoffs race.

“The cricket we are playing and the players we have, the future is strong,” Delhi captain Axar Patel said.

Half-centuries from skipper Shreyas Iyer (59 not out) and Priyansh Arya (56) led Punjab to a challenging total against an all-out Delhi pace attack. Iyer even felt they had 30 more runs than they needed.

Delhi’s two premier overseas fast bowlers Mitchell Starc (2-57) and Lungi Ngidi (0-46) were expensive in the powerplay and Starc, who went for 22 in his first over, also leaked runs in his return spell against Cooper Connolly (38) and Suryansh Shedge (21).

It was the three Indian seamers who pulled back Punjab. Auqib Nabi bowled unchanged for his four overs, and Mukesh Kumar and Madhav Tiwari, in his second Twenty20 took three wickets.

Punjab, like Delhi, used only pace bowlers. Delhi’s chase was in trouble at 74-4 in the ninth over. Arshdeep Singh bowled his four overs on the trot and claimed two wickets that included Delhi's leading run-scorer Lokesh Rahul for 9.

But Patel and Miller revived the chase in a 64-run stand and Patel scored his first fifty of the season after getting dropped early in his innings.

“(My) luck changed a little,” Patel said. “I was trusting my process and the runs came.”

After Patel and Miller were dismissed, impact player Ashutosh Sharma (24 off 10 balls) and Tiwari (18 off 8), one of the five changes Delhi made, took the game away from Punjab in the death overs.

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