Inaugural champions Rajasthan Royals registered a dominating 57-run win over Delhi Capitals in match number 11 of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 at the Barsapara Cricket Stadium in Guwahati. After being asked to bat first, Rajasthan Royals responded brilliantly and scored 199/4 with both their openers Jos Buttler (79 off 51) and Yashasvi Jaiswal (60 off 31) scoring half-centuries.
Initially, Jaiswal was the aggressor with Buttler also playing some brilliant strokes. However, DC made a comeback of sorts when they got the wickets of Jaiswal, Sanju Samson (0) in quick succession before ending local boy Riyan Parag's struggled stay at the middle to an end.
However, Buttler continued and with Shimron Hetmyer's finishing touches in the end, the Men in Pink managed to post a target of 200 for Delhi to win which eventually proved too much for them.
With the ball too, it was just the most perfect start for Rajasthan as Trent Boult bowled yet another double-wicket maiden to start off proceedings for them. He removed Impact Player Prithvi Shaw and making his debut for DC Manish Pandey for ducks off successive balls.
Later, off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin added to Rajasthan's woes and picked the third wicket inside the powerplay. Even though David Warner (65 off 55) top-scored for DC, it wasn't the kind of innings their team needed when they needed 10 runs an over from the outset. His strike rate for majority of his innings stayed under 120, far from an ideal number in this kind of a run-chase.
Other than Warner, Lalit Yadav scored 38 off 24 but fell to Boult just when he looked like he was getting a move on. Trent Boult was the pick of the bowlers for the Royals, finishing with figures of 3/29 while Ashwin (2/25) and Yuzvendra Chahal (3/27) also proved to be effective.
Earlier, Mukesh Kumar, Kuldeep Yadav and Rovman Powell were among the wickets for DC but Khaleel Ahmed and Anrich Nortje went for 15.5 and 11 runs per over respectively.