Hyderabad fast bowler Thangarasu Natarajan tested positive for COVID-19 and was put in isolation hours before the game on Wednesday and the team were also without allrounder Vijay Shankar, who was identified as a close contact of Natarajan.

Without their two key players, Hyderabad were limited to 9-134 thanks largely to some fine pace bowling from Delhi's two South African pacemen Anrich Nortje and Kagiso Rabada.

After they'd won the toss and opted to bat, Warner fell third ball to Nortje (2-12) in the opening over, the paceman going on to allow no-one in the top order to score freely off his four overs.

Captain Kane Williamson (18) couldn't capitalise on two dropped catches before finally holing out in the deep halfway into the innings off left-arm spinner Axar Patel (2-21).

Rabada (3-37), who earlier had removed Wriddhiman Saha inside the batting powerplay, restricted Hyderabad to a below-par total with the wickets of Manish Pandey (17) and Abdul Samad (28).

In reply, Shreyas Iyer (47 not out) and captain Rishabh Pant (35 not out) led the run-chase with a clinical unbroken 67-run stand as Delhi went atop the leaderboard with 14 points by reaching 2-139 in 17.5 overs.

"Our bowlers did a pretty good job to restrict them," Pant said. "We have one of the quickest bowlers in the world (and) I'm pretty happy as the skipper."

Shreyas raised the victory by hammering West Indies fast bowler Jason Holder to long-on boundary for six to hand Hyderabad their seventh loss in the tournament.

Shikhar Dhawan, who was left out by India for next month's Twenty20 World Cup, continued his rich form in this season's IPL by scoring 42 off 37 balls.

Australian Associated Press