The pitch was drier than the previous tracks at the Chinnaswamy Stadium and Bangalore had to do much of the damage against the new ball if they were to hunt down the strong total. However, Jacques Kallis and Manish Pandey were kept relatively quiet by tight spells from Dirk Nannes and Umesh Yadav. Nannes hit the deck hard and moved the ball enough to upset batsmen’s timing and Yadav, the fastest Indian bowler currently going around in the circuit, with speeds consistently ticking over 140 kmph, surprised the batsmen with his line, length and bounce. And it wasn’t all brawn from the youngster; he kept it relatively full to Kallis but hurled a few short deliveries at Pandey to keep him on a leash.
Bangalore’s second opportunity to break free came in the eight over with the introduction of Andrew McDonald and Amit Mishra. It was the make or break moment, with Bangalore needing 129 from 13 overs, but Mishra slipped in fine spell to turn the game decisively in Delhi’s favour. Mishra removed Kallis with a googly and induced Robin Uthappa to edge the reverse-sweep to inflict a double-strike from which Bangalore couldn’t’ recover. McDonald went for 18 runs in his first seven deliveries – Uthappa producing the shot of the day with a nonchalantly-hit six over the straight boundary – but bounced back in his second over by taking out Pandey, and when Rahul Dravid ran himself out in the same over the chase had derailed.
There was just one other moment of thrilling drama and it was provided by AB de Villiers, who jumped back at long-on to take an amazing one-handed catch, even as the ball appeared to have passed him, to get rid of Praveen Kumar. The Delhi bowlers produced a disciplined performance, but it was their batsmen who set up the game. There were three phases of play in Delhi’s innings – an explosive start by Warner, a serene partnership in the middle-overs between AB de Villiers and Dinesh Karthik, and a fiery finish provided by Jadhav. It was Jadhav who gave Delhi the perfect finish, but for the majority of the innings they rode on the momentum provided by Warner.
