The last time these two teams met earlier in the season, Pooran scored 75 runs in 30 deliveries.
Delhi Capitals’ biggest threat against Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) was Nicholas Pooran, who has been sensational in IPL 2025. The last time these two teams met earlier in the season, Pooran scored 75 runs in 30 deliveries, including six boundaries and seven maximums, at a 250 strike rate.
However, DC were prepared this time for this challenge, adopting unusual tactics in Lucknow. They immediately acted to stop high-flying openers while also working on reserves for Pooran, who bats at No.3.
One of the surprising decisions came right at the start of the game when Axar Patel took the new ball and opened the bowling innings. That was done for multiple reasons, the biggest being the vulnerability of both openers against spinners, especially left-arm orthodox.
Before this game, Axar had dismissed Markram twice in 16 deliveries, and Marsh had a meagre strike rate of 128.57 against him, even though he never lost his wicket. Further, both batters have struggled against this bowling type, especially while trying to attack; both have a strike rate of less than 120 this year.
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Another thing is that Nicholas Pooran is very strong against SLAs, striking at a whopping 325 without getting dismissed this year. Further, he has never been out against Axar and has a strike rate of 350.
Hence, the plan was to attack weak links from the start before they set. This also ensured that Axar was done before Pooran came to the crease.
When Dushmantha Chameera finally provided the breakthrough by dismissing Aiden Markram in the 10th over, DC quickly brought Kuldeep Yadav, who was held back, into the attack. Before this fixture, Kuldeep had dismissed the Caribbean batter five times in 70 balls.
However, Pooran was ready for the challenge and unleashed sweep shots to access the leg-side region with minimal risk and succeeded by hitting two consecutive boundaries. But this was not the only plan against Pooran; DC had another big gun waiting to pounce on him.
From the other end, Mitchell Starc came into the attack, and this was another interesting use of his overs by the captain. DC gave him only one over in the powerplay and another when Markram and Marsh were going well, so the general thought would have been to keep the remaining two for slog overs.
But Starc was reintroduced when Pooran arrived because the Aussie pacer had dismissed him four times in 13 deliveries. As it turned out, the left-arm speedster snared him on the first delivery he bowled to Pooran, making it five dismissals in 14 balls.
Starc has dismissed him in five consecutive innings, and the move to give him an over against Pooran paid dividends. He was again removed from the attack and returned in the 19th over to complete his spell, but that one over made the biggest difference in the game.
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