It was not Perth. It was Hyderabad, the stadium that has seen bowlers being massacred in recent history. It was Pat Cummins, not in whites but doing his franchise duties as captain for the Sunrisers Hyderabad. But the batters facing the SRH skipper today in the first powerplay would have experienced a beta version of Cummins with a red-ball in Perth. There was nothing to drive for the batters from Cummins in that fiery opening spell. The precursor to that, though, was seen when he warmed up with 10 minutes to go for the game. As he was bowling deliveries, the ball zipped off the practice wicket.

Story continues below this ad

Coming into the season after the injury Cummins did start the campaign rustily. But on Monday there were no such problems. Karun Nair, who was batting at three, changed his batting position to open and had the misfortune of facing a peach of a delivery from Cummins first up. It was a hard-length delivery which Nair, without any foot movement, ended up flapping the bat around the fourth stump channel, and the ball nipped away a bit taking the outside edge of Nair.

And then it was the turn of Faf du Plessis, who pulled one off the back-foot, and managed to nick it to the keeper Ishan Kishan. It was once again that nasty length from Cummins, which never made batters look comfortable with their footwork,leaving them wondering if they should go forward or stay on the backfoot.

Abhishek Porel too similarly faltered to the same length, but the line from Cummins on that occasion was a tad loose as he pitched on the leg-stump. Nevertheless the ball took the leading edge and stayed in the sky for eternity, but Ishan galloped for a swirling pouch.

It was not just him; Jaydev Unadkat from the other end had a similar plan. The smothering continued through the powerplay, their fielders close-in gave absolutely nothing away with their electric fielding. Both Cummins and Heinrich Klaasen, fielding at mid-on and mid-off, were constantly in the ear of the bowlers, reminding them of plans. The slight release of pressure only came when Cummins himself decided to spring up a surprise delivery to Axar Patel with a fuller one first up, which the Delhi skipper drove for a majestic boundary down the ground.

Once Cummins was done with his opening burst the Capitals still had their crisis men KL Rahul and Axar Patel at the crease, who had bailed them out of trouble on a few occasions this season already. But Cummins was there to interrupt Delhi’s daredevilry again, and it was in the field this time. Harshal Patel’s delivery which Axar carved through extra-cover, was going away from Cummins before he dived and plucked a two-handed stunner.

The Cummins effect had reduced Capitals to 26/4 after the powerplay, and the suffocation continued even after that for a while. Unadkat, coming back in the middle phase of the innings, dealt another blow by picking Rahul, who too fell victim to the hard-length delivery which he tried to drive on the up and ended edging it to the keeper. Vipraj Nigam and Tristan Stubbs did manage to stop the bleeding for a bit before the former ran himself out trying to take a second, which Stubbs was not interested in and after a brief recovery the runout put Capitals further into a hole at 62/6. At this stage the Capitals were under a serious threat of getting bundled out under 100.

Ashutosh-Stubbs rescue act

It is never an ideal situation for the teams batting first to use a batter as an impact sub, and the Capitals predicament forced their hand and they had to turn to Ashutosh Sharma who has been used by Capitals as finisher predominantly in the season and had to play a different role which he managed to do efficiently.

The partnership between Ashutosh and Stubbs did save the blushes for the Capitals. The duo went on to put up a 66 (45) partnership. It was Ashutosh who triggered the counter-assault with a couple of sixes against Zeeshan Ansari. Asutosh danced down the track, and despite not reaching the pitch of the ball with his power, he managed to clear the ropes with ease. The young leggie was the weakest link of the SRH bowling attack on the night.

Asutosh was quite calculative on the bowlers whom he targeted; In addition to Ansari, the 26-year-old also took a liking to the pace variations of Harshal. Anything which came into his arc, he pounced upon ruthlessly with precision. His timely innings injected some hope into the Capitals’ innings and momentum into Stubbs’ innings, who was stuttering at less than a run a ball for the majority of his knock.