NEW DELHI - There had been a light, on-off drizzle right through the match, and it grew in intensity over the course of the Chennai Super Kings chase. Fifth ball of the 15th over, Suresh Raina aimed a big drive at a full, off-stump ball from Jaydev Unadkat and edged it past the wicketkeeper for four. Raina pumped his fist.
Super Kings were 127 for 1. They still needed 52 from 31 balls. But they had edged ahead of the Duckworth-Lewis par score for that ball. The next ball was a dot ball, a slower ball that Raina inside-edged into his pads. If the players had gone off the field at that point, the match would have been tied.
The rain came steadily down, and insects, drawn to the haloes around the floodlight towers, swarmed over the Feroz Shah Kotla. The equation seemed to change with every over, with every ball. Super Kings were four runs ahead of the rate, after taking 14 off Wayne Parnell in the 16th over. Jaydev Unadkat kept it down to five from the 17th, and Delhi Daredevils were in the ascendancy again, but only just.
It kept drizzling. The Delhi Daredevils bowlers kept reaching for the towel in the umpire’s waistband. But it never grew heavy enough for the umpires to call the players off the field. Super Kings remained there or thereabouts, and remained in control. Delhi simply couldn’t get a wicket.
When they finally did get one - Smith holing out in the penultimate over - panic seemed to set in, and Wayne Parnell somehow managed to keep Super Kings down to five, despite giving away a boundary first ball. It left Super Kings with 11 to get from the last over.
Jaydev Unadkat had the ball for Delhi; Super Kings had Raina and MS Dhoni.
It was an unequal contest in terms of Twenty20 pedigree and experience, and all it took was one ball in Dhoni’s slot - the second of the over - for the ball to disappear over the long-on boundary and the equation to come down to four from four. There could only be one result from there.

Scoreboard

DELHI:
Q de Kock run out    24
M Vijay c du Plessis b Jadeja    35
K Pietersen b Sharma     0
K Karthik c Sharma b Hilfenhaus    51
L Shukla c Pandey b Ashwin    0
JP Duminy not out    28
K Jadhav not out    29
EXTRAS: (lb 6, w 5)    11
TOTAL: (5 wkts; 20 overs)    178
FOW: 1-36, 2-37, 3-108, 4-119, 5-120 
BOWLING: B Hilfenhaus 4-0-34-1, I Pandey 3-1-26-0, M Sharma 4-0-51-1, R Jadeja 4-0-23-1, R Ashwin 4-0-29-1, D Smith 1-0-9-0
CHENNAI:
D Smith c Vijay b Parnell    79
B McCullum c Vijay b Shukla    32
S Raina not out    47
MS Dhoni not out    12
EXTRAS: (b4, lb5, w2)    11
TOTAL: (2 wkts; 19.4 overs)    181
FOW: 1-82, 2-168
BOWLING: M Shami 4-0-42-0, W Parnell 4-0-25-1, J Unadkat 3.4-0-47-0, S Nadeem 4-0-27-0, L Shukla 4-0-31-1
TOSS: Chennai
UMPIRES: R Deshpande, B Oxenford (Aus)
TV UMPIRE: C Shamshuddin
MATCH REFEREE: J Srinath