Ashutosh leads Capitals to thrilling win over Super Giants

The explosive hitting of Mitchell Marsh and Nicholas Pooran put the Super Giants on course for a mammoth score, but their innings tailed off somewhat as they finished 209-8.

Some early wickets made that total appear defendable, but Ashutosh – one of the Capitals' headline auction buys – slammed 66 runs to propel Delhi to a stirring fightback.

Vipraj Nigam got the Capitals off to a strong start when he scalped Aiden Markram (15) to take his first IPL wicket from his fourth delivery, his googly being miscued into the palms of Mitchell Starc.

But Lucknow could rely on their other opener, with Marsh slamming 72 runs off 36 balls against his former team before finally being caught by Tristan Stubbs in the 12th over.

Marsh was not the only former Delhi player going up against his old team. One of the major stories of the off-season saw Rishabh Pant become the most expensive buy in IPL history when he left Delhi for the Super Giants in November's action.

But Pant's spell with Lucknow got off to an inauspicious start as he walked for a six-ball duck, being caught by Faf du Plessis when attempting to hit Kuldeep Yadav for a boundary.

His dismissal did not slow the Super Giants, though, with Pooran reaching 75 off 30 balls for an even better strike rate than Marsh (250.00 to 200.00) before Starc (3-42) bowled him.

x 2 pic.twitter.com/lRn3HsSAep

— Lucknow Super Giants (@LucknowIPL) March 24, 2025

But the hosts' batting tailed off after that dismissal, with David Miller (27*) making the only other notable contribution as they tacked on a mere 49 in their final seven overs.

Delhi might have been relieved to avoid conceding a bigger score, yet their own innings was put in danger thanks to some fine pace bowling from Shardul Thakur (2-19), who had Jake Fraser-McGurk (1) and Abishek Porel (0) caught within the first five balls of his Lucknow debut.

Not to be outdone, Manimaran Siddharth (2-39) struck in his first over to remove Sameer Rizvi (4), and he later doubled up to dismiss the dangerous Stubbs (34) after Delhi had steadied themselves from 65-5 to 113-6.

Lucknow looked comfortable at that point, but Ashutosh had other ideas. Having scored 19 runs off his first 19 balls faced, he hit 47 from his final 12, including the clinching maximum when Delhi required five runs off the final four balls.

A win for the ages pic.twitter.com/DmeAgPoGES

— Delhi Capitals (@DelhiCapitals) March 24, 2025

Ashutosh's debut IPL campaign, with the Punjab Kings in 2024, saw him hit 189 runs from 11 innings at an impressive strike rate of 167.25.

That form earned him a big-money move to Delhi in the auction, and he did not disappoint on his first outing with his new team, recording a strike rate of 212.90 while slamming five fours and five maximums en route to his best-ever IPL score.

In perhaps the decisive moment of the match, he went six, four, six from three successive balls after taking off his helmet to face Ravi Bishnoi, who had appeared to stymie Delhi's momentum with the wicket of Starc.