Delhi Daredevils Break Chennai Super Kings

After 5 turns in the round-robin league of the Indian Premier League Twenty20 series, the rankings are quite interesting and might even have had an unbeaten streak for the Chennai Super Kings, had it not been for the Delhi Daredevils disciplined bowling and batting today at Chennai.

The game was foreshadowed somewhat by the departure of Matthew Hayden, Mike Hussey, and Jacob Oram to prepare for an Australia-New Zealand series. Perhaps for this reason, but as much due the efficient Delhi bowling, Chennai were limited to 169, not a good enough score in Twenty20 any more. Stephen Fleming saw his first inning in the IPL, a rather good one, but losing his wicket in the fourth over. Vidyut's own maiden inning was better, and partnerships between Vidyut and Dhoni, and then Morkel pushed the score up, but they seemed to lose steam in the middle overs.e

The Delhi batting was more focused, and high scoring. Right from the start, Gautam Gambhir and Virendra Sehwag kept up the pace, and pushed the score past 100 in just under 9 overs. Sehwag hit quite a few sixes and fours, until he was caught in the twelfth over. Gambhir went in the 14th over, and the run rate slowed somewhat as de Villiers and Shikhar Dhawan wrapped up the total in the last ball of the final over, winning by 8 wickets.

The points table has a bit of an upset after this game, and the remaining games before the knock-out stage should be interesting as the top teams battle for their positions with the struggling middle order teams. The bottom-ranked teams like Bangalore and Mumbai have little hope of surviving this stage, but stranger upsets have occurred in cricket.

Team	Games	Won	Lost	Tied	N/R	Pts	Net RR
Delhi	5	4	1	0	0	8	1.263
Chennai	5	4	1	0	0	8	0.743
Rajasthan	5	4	1	0	0	8	0.525
Punjab	5	3	2	0	0	6	0.372
Kolkata	5	2	3	0	0	4	0.681
Deccan	5	1	4	0	0	2	-0.214
Mumbai	5	1	4	0	0	2	-1.396
Bangalore	5	1	4	0	0	2	-1.886

Off-field, both Shane Warne and Saurav Ganguly were fined for their sportsmanship, or the perceived lack of it. Also, Harbhajan Singh has apparently disappeared from IPL and Mumbai Indians hoardings.