Two deliveries later, Gautam Gambhir edged an extravagant drive towards third man. VRV Singh saw the ball late, was slow off the blocks, and decided to stand back and take it on the bounce. The Delhi Daredevils had just been let off the hook and Sreesanth looked like he would cry.

Sehwag went on to smash a rain-interrupted, unbeaten 51 as Delhi reached 118 for four in their stop-start Indian Premier League encounter at the Ferozeshah Kotla on Saturday night.

If they hadn’t played such poor cricket at the start, the visitors might have blamed the conditions for their predicament. The second half (or the third bit) of the match got underway in surreal conditions; there was thunder and lightening and a classic Delhi duststorm to deal with. Empty cartons, long strips of plastic and other such rubbish flew across the stadium, provided a fitting backdrop for the chase, which rose from the wreckage of three early dismissals after Shaun Marsh, Yuvraj Singh and James Hopes had been dismissed by three sensational catches in the deep.

Punjab’s 94-3 in eight overs meant that they won the match with a six-run margin as per Duckworth/Lewis calculations when rain stopped play.

Living by the sword

Through the Indian Premier League, Delhi’s batting has been driven by their top three.

The two Delhi openers started off by throwing caution to the wind, and got away with it. Sehwag had opened his account with a thick-edged drive to third-man for six and Gambhir joined in with some slashes of his own. There was a distinct lack of authority in their early batting, but with every nick, Mohali bled. The Daredevils were living by the sword, Kings XI Punjab were dying by it.

After the unsettling start, Sehwag realised his bat did have a middle after all. He got his front-foot out of the way and spanked VRV Singh over covers for a flat six. VRV, fast bowler that he is, banged the next one in short. Sehwag flayed that over the point boundary.

Gambhir motored along at the other end — overshadowed, but not outscored. He had rattled off 40 runs (28b, 7x4, 1x6) before being bowled by a Ramesh Powar arm-ball.

A brief shower had delayed the start of the match by 20 minutes, and with the Daredevils coasting at 86 for one after 8.1 overs, the skies opened up.

The match was reduced to 11 overs a side after a two-hour delay, and the contest to a lottery.

Delhi Daredevils

G Gambhir b Powar (28b 7x4 1x6) 40

V Sehwag not out (26b 2x4 5x6) 51

S Dhawan c Chawla b Powar (5b 1x6) 8

T Dilshan c Pomersbach b Hopes (6b 1x4) 8

F Maharoof c Powar b Hopes (1b) 0

S Malik not out (1b) 1

Extras (lb 2, w 7, nb 1) 10

Total (4 wickets; 11 overs) 118

FoW: 1-75, 2-104, 3-115, 4-116

Bowling: Sreesanth 3-0-33-0, I Pathan 2-0-13-0, VRV Singh 2-0-33-0; R Powar 2-0-22-2, P Chawla 1-0-13-0, J Hopes 1-0-2-2

Kings XI Punjab

S Marsh c Dhawan b Sangwan (5b) 2

J Hopes c Shoaib Malik b Mishra (6b) 4

Yuvraj c Maharoof b McGrath (8b 1x4 3x6) 23

M Jayawardene not out (17b 3x4 2x6) 36

L Pomersbach not out (12b 3x6) 25

Extras: (lb 2, w 2) 4

Total (3 wickets; 8 overs) 94

FoW: 1-3, 2-30, 3-31

Bowling: G McGrath 2-0-18-1, P Sangwan 1-0-12-1, A Mishra 2-0-21-1, V Sehwag 1-0-22-0, F Maharoof 1-0-11-0, R Bhatia 1-0-8-0.

Kings XI Punjab win by 6 runs on D/L method.