Spinners Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav were inspirational in the middle overs even as Shardul Thakur complemented the duo with a career-best IPL figures as Delhi Capitals inched closer towards play-off qualifications beating Punjab Kings by 17 runs in an IPL match on Monday.
Invited to bat, DC posted 159/7 courtesy Mitchell Marsh's 48-ball 63 and then restricted Punjab to 142/9. Thakur (4/36), Axar (2/14) and Kuldeep (2/14) shared eight wickets among them while Anrich Nortje got the important wicket of Jonny Bairstow.
Meanwhile, DC skipper Rishabh Pant was happy that his team could finally buck the trend of winning one and losing the next game in the IPL while a dejected PBKS leader Mayank Agarwal wanted to forget his team's inept batting show in a hurry.
"Playing throughout the tournament, we have been losing one game and winning one game. That's something we wanted to change as a team and we got it," Pant said after the match.
His opposite number Agarwal was grim and was trying hard to control his anger which was writ large on his face.
"We need to speak about the way we went about things with the bat, but that's about it. It's a game to forget," Aagrwal stated.
"We didn't bat well. Between overs 5 and 10, we lost too many wickets and that's where we lost the game. I thought it was definitely chaseable for the batting we have and the wicket wasn't as bad as it seemed.
"We just lost too many wickets between the 5th and 10th over and lost the game there," the Punjab Kings skipper added.
From his body language, it was evident that Agarwal was not at all convinced that his team has an iota of chance of qualifying in play-offs.
"I think we haven't yet played our best cricket yet and we look forward to doing that in the last game," he further said.
Winning captain Pant said the plan was to bat deep on a track where Punjab spinners Liam Livingstone and Harpreet Brar did bowl well.
"The only thought process was to take it deep. We saw the spinners bowling well in the wicket. The wicket was slow." Pant also said that Prithvi Shaw remains a highly doubtful starter for the next game though he has been discharged from the hospital after recovering from typhoid.
