The talking point at the end of the third day of the Delhi vs Madhya Pradesh game was the sledging battle that took place between members of the two teams in the middle, in full view of the two umpires (Pratap Kumar and BSP Rao), the match referee and the spectators.Delhi batsman Mithun Manhas and MP’s Rahul Bakshi were engaged in a sledging war to start with and later MP’s Devendra Bundela also joined in. Later match referee talked to both skippers, telling them to ‘‘behave’’.MP skipper Amay Khurasia placed the blame squarely on his Delhi counterpart Ajay Jadeja. ‘‘Delhi started sledging from the second day. They have some good young players but are being led by a wrong person who is instigating them,’’ Khurasia said bluntly at the end of the third day’s play.As for the match, the fear of losing seems to be haunting the Delhi team. Having come out of the jaws of defeat in the season opener against Gujarat at Ahmedabad in trying to win outright, the Delhi team has been adopting the safety first policy thereafter. With six points from three games, Delhi were expected to go for the kill against MP, but poor batting by their frontline batsmen put Delhi on the defensive once again.On Monday, after conceding a 55-run lead to MP, the Delhi batsmen piled more pressure on themselves by batting slowly. At the end of the day’s play, they were 64 in front with six wickets remaining. MP pacer Sunil Dholpure gave another exhibition of disciplined bowling to finish the day with 3-37, following his first innings effort of 4-63.
