• Tahir, Duminy star in Delhi win

    Imran Tahir and JP Duminy took three and two wickets respectively as the Delhi Daredevils ended their 11-match losing streak by beating the Kings XI Punjab by 5 wickets in Pune on Wednesday.

    353 days – that is how many days it took Delhi Daredevils to put the brakes on their losing streak. They tasted success on Wednesday – for the first time since 27 April 2014 – when they defeated Sunrisers Hyderabad by 5 wickets at the ACA-VDCA Stadium in Visakhapatnam. Set to chase 166, Delhi Daredevils were slow off the blocks, but accelerated through Mayank Agarwal and Yuvraj Singh, who added 106 from 66 balls.

    Though DD lost opener Shreyas Iyer to a short-pitched delivery from Sandeep Sharma and skipper JP Duminy was run out in unfortunate circumstances – backing up too far, they had a platform which set up the chase.

    Agarwal, who had picked up three boundaries in the first two overs, reined himself and appeared to be batting with the intention of batting through to the end. He kept ticking the scoreboard over, while Yuvraj raced off the blocks hitting four boundaries in his first 21 runs.

    KXIP skipper Bailey bowled out Sandeep and Johnson by the 15th over in search of wickets. Once Agarwal and Yuvraj had survived past the 15 overs, there was going to be only one winner.

    The former became the first batsman to post 50 in the match with an audacious hook shot off Johnson. Yuvraj turned on the heat in the 16th over when he deposited the left-arm spinner Axar Patel into the stands twice – once over long on and then over the square-leg fence.

    He then whipped a full length delivery from Anureet Singh into the stands to bring up his half-century; the 33-year old left-hander consumed 39 balls for his 55, and his association with Agarwal yielded the team 106 runs.

    Both the half-centurions perished in the 19th over – off consecutive deliveries – with their team needing seven more runs to win. Angelo Mathews struck the winning hit off Axar Patel to see his team past the finish line – with a solitary ball to spare.

    Earlier, Tahir claimed 3-43 in four overs and Duminy 2-16 in two overs. Duminy removed Virender Sehwag (47) and South African teammate David Miller (5), while Tahir sent the danger men Glenn Maxwell (15) and George Bailey (19) back to the dressing room before they could really get going.