Delhi Daredevils will hope that their batting clicks into gear when they take on Rising Pune Supergiant at the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium in Pune on Tuesday.

The Daredevils, ably led by veteran Zaheer Khan, bowled well in their first match to restrict Royal Challengers Bangalore to only 157/8. But apart from Rishabh Pant’s heroic 36-ball 57, no other Delhi batsman stepped up to the plate as they lost by 15 runs.

Pune, on the other hand, will hope their own batting steps up. They slipped to 71/4 against Punjab in their last match and it required a rescue effort by Manoj Tiwary and Ben Stokes to take them over 150. But Punjab chased the target down without much fuss.

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Time: 8 pm

Venue: Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium, Pune

TV: Sony Max, Sony Six, Sony ESPN and their HD channels

Results in 2016:

Played: 2

Pune won: 2

Delhi won: 0

Rising Pune Supergiant

  • It will be an interesting match for South Africa’s Imran Tahir. He was a part of Delhi Daredevils last season who released him only for Tahir not to get a bidder at the auction. He was finally drafted in by Pune and made an immediate impact, returning with figures of 3/28 and 2/29 in his first two games.
  • The focus will continue to remain on Mahendra Singh Dhoni who looked distinctly scratchy and has hit only one four in the 23 balls he’s faced so far.
  • Ashok Dinda had a horror first start, being hammered for 30 runs in his last over against Mumbai and then conceding 1/26 in 3 overs against Punjab. How long with Pune persist with him?

Squad: Steve Smith (captain), MS Dhoni, Ajinkya Rahane, Faf du Plessis, Ben Stokes, Imran Tahir, Mayank Agarwal, Manoj Tiwary, Milind Tandon, Usman Khawaja, Ankush Bains, Rahul Tripathi, Saurabh Kumar, Rahul Chahar, Lockie Ferguson, Daniel Christian, Baba Aparajith, Rajat Bhatia, Jaydev Unadkat, Ashok Dinda, Ishwar Pandey, Adam Zampa, Deepak Chahar, Jaskaran Singh.

Delhi Daredevils

  • Karun Nair’s continuing poor form remains a cause of worry for the Daredevils, even more so in a team which is light on batting ability. Since his triple century, Nair’s sequence of scores in all formats read 14, 12, 28, 7, 14, 12, 4, 26, 23, 5 and 4.
  • Will new import Ben Hilfenahaus get a go for Delhi? It looks unlikely as their bowling unit performed well against Royal Challengers Bangalore, restricting them to 157.
  • The Daredevils may push Rishabh Pant, who impressed with his heroic 57 against RCB in the face of personal tragedy, up the order. Pant came in at No 5 in the last innings and Delhi might want him to come up the order.

“Yeah, very disappointed with the result [of the last match]. Real shame to not get over the line. We are focused on the next game now. There are lots of positives to take from the previous game”

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Sam Billings, Delhi Daredevils batsman

Squad: Zaheer Khan (captain), Angelo Mathews, Corey Anderson, Kagiso Rabada, Pat Cummins, Ankit Bawne, Aditya Tare, Murugan Ashwin, Navdeep Saini, Shashank Singh, Mohammed Shami, Shahbaz Nadeem, Jayant Yadav, Amit Mishra, Shreyas Iyer, Sam Billings, Sanju Samson, Chris Morris, Carlos Brathwaite, Karun Nair, Rishabh Pant, Chama Milind, Khaleel Ahmed, Pratyush Singh.