Rising Pune Supergiant (RPS) started an off-field battle with their contenders on April 11, Delhi Daredevils (DD). It was no ordinary challenge as they invited their counterparts for a ‘Mannequin Challenge’. RPS started the challenge as the video showed Ben Stokes using his phone while lying down on the carpet. Surprisingly, Ashok Dinda was seen playing Chess with Rajat Bhatia.
The video-cum-challenge also featured Ajinkya Rahane with his teammate and last but not the least skipper Steven Smith playing carrom-board with Steven Smith. Well, for all those who do not know what a Mannequin challenge is, here is your guide. In this challenge, the participants remain still or frozen all along the video whereas the camera shifts from one to another.
.@kingfisherworld@DelhiDaredevils, think you can beat us?#Supergiants, show them we do it best with videos#KingfisherMannequinChallenge pic.twitter.com/A60OxSiHIZ
— RisingPuneSupergiant (@RPSupergiants) April 11, 2017
This trend went viral in the latter part of 2016. However, the Mannequin song is ‘Black Beatles’, RPS team went with a different soundtrack to perform the challenge as the background track featured the brand ‘Kingfisher’.
Moving ahead, DD were not going to back down from a challenge, they were up for it right away and posted their video on their Twitter handle soon enough. Here’s their reply-
Challenge accepted @RPSupergiants.
Thanks @kingfisherworld! @mipaltan आता तुमची पाळी #KingfisherMannequinChallenge#DilDilliHai pic.twitter.com/pK0hXmCDiz— Delhi Daredevils (@DelhiDaredevils) April 11, 2017
DD’s video started with South African speedster Kagiso Rabada standing on the door of their gym area who is still to make his IPL debut. You can see the players freeze in their workout position. One can notice players like Shahbaz Nadeem, IPL 2017 centurion Sanju Samson and other players as well.
Amit Mishra too looked funny freeze while doing shoulder exercise. Whereas Australian bowling all-rounder Pat Cummins was lying on the Anti-Burst Gym ball. In the end, skipper Zaheer Khan was seen on the treadmill.
It was all taken in a sporting spirit from DD players. However, on the field, they were ruthless competitors as Delhi thrashed Pune by a 97-run win. Samson scored first century of IPL 2017, whereas, Chris Morris was just 2 hits away from breaking Yuvraj’s fastest fifty record. Zaheer and Mishra too performed well with the ball picking up 3 wickets each.
