Chennai Superstars beat Delhi Giants by 24 runs

Hyderabad, Sep 24 (UNI) Powered by a solid opening partnership of 91 runs between Vignesh and Hemanth Kumar, Chennai Superstars today defeated Delhi Giants by 24 runs in the ICL 20-20 domestic tournament at the Lahari Resorts here.

Hemanth Kumar was declared man of the match for his superb knock of 80 runs off 48 balls, including 10 fours and 3 sixes.

Earlier in the day, Giants' skipper Yadav won the toss and put the Superstars in to bat. Vignesh and Kumar set the tempo with some audacious stroke-play and their superb 91-run partnership, the highest opening stand partnership in the tournament, put the Superstars on the top.

Hemanth Kumar's brilliant innings helped the Chennai side score 167/7 in their allotted 20 overs.

In reply, none of the top three Giants' batsmen clicked, primarily due to a superb bowling spell from Superstars' pacer Jesuraj who returned with a match winning spell of 3/10 in his allotted 4 over spell.

The Giants received a further shock with the quick dismissals of their dependable middle order duo Abbas Ali and JP Yadav.

The only significant contributions from the Giants' stable came from the bats of Dhruv Mahajan (27 off 26 balls) and a late onslaught from Abid Nabi (41 off 15 balls).

But that came too late as the Giants fell short of the target by 24 runs, helping the Superstars to the top of the table with three wins from same number of matches.

Brief Scores Chennai Superstars 167/7 in 20 overs (Hemanth Kumar 80, Vignesh 49, Srivastava 2/23) Delhi Giants 143/8 in 20overs (Nabi 41, Mahajan 27, Jesuraj 3/10) UNI XR VA GM RAR RN1934