Right-arm England pacer Mark Wood unleashed thunderbolts regularly and made Delhi Capitals' (DC) batters look like greenhorns during Lucknow Super Giants' (LSG) fantastic victory on April 1 (Saturday). Wood not only exposed Indian batters' weakness against genuine pacers but also made life difficult for overseas batters. In his dream spell with the ball, Wood breathed fire and rattled the woodwork twice. It was his fiery spell that rolled out LSG's path to a resounding 50-run win against DC.
While Wood played a pivotal role in inflicting a loss on the Delhi-based franchise, the DC head coach Ricky Ponting, however, cited the team's sloppy efforts on the field as the major reason behind the defeat.
"To be totally honest, I think they got more runs than they probably should have. I don't think we helped ourselves in the field. After the first four overs, our fielding was really sloppy; a couple of chances went down, a few misfields. One of the chances that went down, Mayers ended up going on a bit of run after that, which put us behind the game a little bit," Ponting said in the post-match press conference.
Mayers, who played a thunderous knock of 73 runs off 38 balls with the help of two fours and seven sixes, rode his luck as Khaleel Ahmed dropped a sitter at short fine-leg off Chetan Sakariya's bowling when the West Indian batter was batting on just 14 runs.
Ponting also underlined that the bowlers failed to execute the plan that was put in place, as a result, conceded 16 sixes in the innings.
"We conceded 16 sixes in our bowling innings and that goes to show we were off with our execution. When you give away that many, it's hard to drag yourself back into the game. I didn't think it was a 190-plus wicket. There was a lot of dew there, if anything, the wicket was probably better for us batting second, so there are a few reasons why we lost the game," Ponting opined.
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