Delhi Giants romp home to second straight victory at ICL 20 -20 Domestic Tournament.

The fourth match in the ICL 20-20 domestic tournament featured the Delhi Giants take on the resurgent Royal Bengal Tigers at the Lahari Resorts ground Hyderabad. Both teams went into their second match after scoring comprehensive wins in their opening matches.

In the end it was the Giants that scampered home with a five wicket victory with two balls to spare. JP Yadav won his second consecutive man of the match award for a solid 38 with the bat.

The Giants won the toss and elected to field to take advantage of the overcast conditions prevailing in Hyderabad. The Tigers received a jolt early in their innings when the experienced Deep Dasgupta was found short of his crease leaving the Tigers score reading 1-2 in the first over. The middle order tried to resurrect the Tigers’ innings with useful contributions from the experience Rohan Gavaskar (22 of 20 balls) & Rajeev Kumar (35 off 39 balls).

Disciplined bowling assisted by some sharp fielding, helped the Giants keep a tight leash on the Tigers scorecard. Rajiv Kumar held the innings well for the Tigers, showing glimpses of his purple patch; especially coming into the tournament after a successful stint in the English domestic competition.

Some big hitting from Mihir Diwakar in the death overs saw the Tigers reach a respectable 136/7 in their allotted 20 overs. For the Giants, it was their spin combination of Abhishek Sharma & wily Ali Murtaza who returned as the most successful bowlers with two scalps each.

In reply the Giants got off to a steady start scoring 30 odd runs off the first five overs. The promising partnership between Bali & Mishra was broken short by the impressive Pritam Das who scalped Mishra for a well made 18. Das looked impressive troubling most of the Giants batsmen and returned with impressive figures of 3/10 in his allotted 4 overs.

For the Giants it was again left to the impressive middle order combination of Abbas Ali (27 runs) & JP Yadav (38 runs) to come up with a match deciding 52 run partnership. Eklak Ahmid caused panic in the Giants dug out with two quick scalps of Abbas Ali & Dhruv Mahajan in the 18th over. However the cool head Yagnik & Sudhindra saw the Giants romp home with two balls to spare.