Mumbai: Yuvraj Singh struck a brilliant half century to lift Delhi Daredevils to a challenging score of 152 for 6 against Mumbai Indians in their crucial IPL cricket match at the Wankhede Stadium here on Tuesday.
Yuvraj, the costliest buy at the players' auction at Rs 16 crore, has been woefully out of form barring a score of 54 against Kings XI Punjab at Pune and a lot was expected from him to rally Delhi when they slumped to 50 for 3 inside 7 overs after electing to bat.
The left-handed batsman rose to the occasion with a stroke-filled 57 off 44 balls that included two successive leg-side sixes off Mitchell McClenaghan and seven fours before he departed slashing Lasith Malinga in the last ball of the penultimate over.
Delhi's batting was, on the whole, disappointing with skipper Jean-Paul Duminy making the second best score of 28.
For Mumbai, Harbhajan Singh was easily the outstanding bowler with superb figures of 2 for 11 in four overs while Malinga got 2 for 33. McClenaghan was expensive without a wicket to his name while Jagadeesha Suchith and Hardik Pandya took the other two wickets.
Delhi started on the wrong foot when Mayank Agarwal hung his bat out to the first ball from Malinga and edged behind.
The duo of captain Duminy and youngster Shreyas Iyer raised hopes of another fight-back when the South African smashed a straight six with good timing off Vinay Kumar and Iyer followed suit by taking 14 runs off McClenaghan.
Iyer hit two lofted fours and was lucky when Suchith and Pandya clashed at cover point while chasing a leading edge and reprieved the youngster on 10.
And when Duminy swung Vinay Kumar for a second six over mid wicket followed by a straight-driven four, the score had jumped to 43 off five overs.
