Ravichandran Ashwin and Gautam Gambhir, after a long stint with their respective former teams, have started things off with their new sides by facing each other in the second encounter of the Indian Premier League [IPL] 2018. And the men led by the former CSK spinner clinched a victory over the former KKR captain’s band.

Winning the toss, Ashwin’s Kings XI Punjab decided to bowl first against Delhi Daredevils. A fifty from the skipper powered Delhi to post 166 runs on the scoreboard.

Alongside Gautam Gambhir who fell victim to a run out on 55 runs, Rishabh Pant’s cameo of 13-ball 28 runs and Chris Morris’ unbeaten innings of 27 runs helped the team put up a fighting total while rest of the batting line-up failed to add enough runs to the total.

Mujeeb Ur Rahman and Mohit Sharma bagged 2 wickets each for Punjab while Ravichandran Ashwin and Axar Patel also took one wicket apiece to scalp 7 wickets of the opponents.

The Punjab-based franchise had its job “almost done” when KL Rahul recorded the fastest half-century in the history of the league. He reached the milestone in just 14 balls, one delivery less than the previous record held jointly by Sunil Narine and Yusuf Pathan.

Rahul returned to the pavilion scoring 51 off 16 as Trent Boult got him out. Then another fifty from Karun Nair with Mayank Agarwal and Yuvraj Singh’s failure to score enough runs in-between, took the team closer to the target.

Agarwal’s departure was followed by an unbeaten stand between David Miller and Marcus Stoinis, both of whom contributed 20-odd runs to their team total.

Daniel Christian, Rahul Tewatia, and Morris took a scalp each for Delhi but failed to prevent the opponents from sealing the game with a 6-wicket win.

Delhi Daredevils will take on Rajasthan Royals in their next game on Wednesday and Kings XI Punjab will face Royal Challengers Bangalore in their upcoming fixture.