Data Shorts: Karn, Santner spin it around for MI

The action moved to Delhi for the first time in IPL 2025, another unforgiving venue for bowlers, just 24 hours after a 246-run target was killed without a sweat in Hyderabad. In Delhi in IPL 2024, eight of the ten innings saw scores of 200 or more, and the short boundaries only exacerbate the problem. Last season, spinners went at 10.48 runs an over, only marginally less than 10.54 in Hyderabad among the 13 venues used. However, there was a risk-reward element too. The Arun Jaitley Stadium's spin strike rate of 17.2 was the highest of the ten venues that hosted at least five matches in the previous year. With the exception of run-outs, spinners took nine of the twelve wickets on Sunday, with good length deliveries doing the most damage. DC spinners bagged 3/34 at an economy of 6.58 from good length, and MI batters countered the ploy by using the sweep to great effect (conventional or slog) - scoring 35 off the 11 such strokes attempted. 18 off 6 came off the ones from good length, while also accounting for Rohit Sharma's dismissal, who was outfoxed by the variation (googly). DC were well on their way when MI spinners entered the fight, and Karun Nair had scored 50 off 22. Abishek Porel struck Mitchell Santner for a boundary off a short ball in his first over, his only wicket from the first five games of the season. In the meantime, Nair beat Karn Sharma with a slog-swept six, following Suryakumar Yadav's strategy from the first half. After Porel was hit, Karn beat Porel by tossing one into the stands, but Nair hit consecutive fours with the reverse and conventional sweeps to end the over. Before the left-armer found the perfect pitch to break through Santner's defense, the right-hander capitalized on a short pitch from Santner: a 90.5 kph ball that spun sharply away to take the top off. After Jasprit Bumrah took out Axar Patel, there was a ball change, and the game was about to take a big turn. Santner and Karn were able to control the ball better with the changed ball despite the heavy dew. The added bounce helped make the sweeps and slogs riskier as well. KL Rahul and Tristan Stubbs, the pair that had orchestrated DC's tricky chase against RCB earlier in the week, were undone by exactly that, finding top-edges in successive overs from the wrist-spinner. There were some eyebrows raised when Hardik Pandya bowled Santner in the 18th over, and Vipraj Nigam's six and four threatened to tip the balance once more. That sequence eventually culminated in a setup. The six came from a delivery at 92.6 kph, the four came from a brilliant adjustment to one that was thrown wide at 97.1 kph, and the leg-bye came from one that was fired in at 95.7 kph. When Vipraj came on strike next, Santner, perhaps having spotted the footwork early enough, slowed it down to 74.7 kmph wide outside off (his slowest delivery of the night) to have him stumped.