Rajasthan Royals’ Ajinkya Rahane works it onto leg side during his unbeaten 91 against Delhi Daredevils in Mumbai. (BCCI)

IANS/Mumbai

Ajinkya Rahane (91 in 54 balls) and Karun Nair (61 from 38 balls) helped Rajasthan Royals (RR) register their sixth win of the season, beating Delhi Daredevils  by 14 runs in the Indian Premier League yesterday.
Riding on a 113-run partnership by Rahane and Nair for the second wicket, Royals posted a challenging 189/2 in 20 overs. In reply, Daredevils were never close to matching the skills displayed by Royals and eventually ended their innings at 175/7 in 20 overs. Skipper J.P. Duminy was the top scorer with 56 runs off 39 balls.
With the defeat, Delhi suffered their fifth loss in the tournament. Earlier put into bat, Rajasthan got off to a modest start, with openers Rahane and Shane Watson taking time to get settled in the middle.
Later they took on the Daredevils bowling piling up team’s first fifty in just 6.2 overs. But as skipper Watson was looking to get settled, a surprising delivery by Angelo Mathews got him caught by the wicketkeeper for 21 off 24 balls.
Nair gave good company to Rahane. The duo brought up their 100-run partnership for the second wicket in just 63 balls. With his splendid innings, Rahane replaced Sunrisers Hyderabad skipper David Warner in the leading run scorers list with 430 runs. Daredevils dropped three catches in the innings. For Delhi, Mathews was the pick of the bowlers, picking up one wicket and finishing with figures of 4-0-27-1 but other bowlers - Zaheer Khan, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Amit Mishra, Gurwinder Sandhu - all leaked runs.
In reply, Delhi got off to a worst possible start with losing both the openers - Mayank Agarwal (11) and Shreyas Iyer (9) - within five overs.
Yuvraj Singh too didn’t last long, scoring just 22 off 18 balls. Angelo Mathews (16) and Kedar Jadav (11) also departed in space of two overs.
This made it more difficult for Daredevils to chase the huge target. Duminy tried his best, but looking to up the scoring rate, was caught by Dhawal Kulkarni off the bowling of James Faulkner.
With the dismissal of Duminy it looked all over for Delhi as wickets fell in clusters. For Rajasthan, James Faulkner was the pick of the bowlers picking up two wickets and finishing with figures of 4-0-22-2.
Brief Score: Rajasthan Royals 189/2 in 20 overs (Ajinkya Rahane 91 not out, Karun Nair 61; Angelo Mathews 1/27, Nathan Coulter-Nile 1/38) bt Delhi Daredevils 111/2 in 20 overs (JP Duminy 56; James Faulkner 2/22, Stuart Binny 2/27, Dhawal Kulkarni 2/43, Shane Watson 1/25)



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