The Australia T20 skipper Marsh opened his campaign in promising fashion as he clouted 35 off 28 balls, and if he wasn't motoring along at his usual strike-rate, it was only because he had to exercise some caution with wickets tumbling around him.
Four Super Giants wickets had already fallen before Marsh, who had thumped a couple of fours to go with his hat-trick of maximums at Lucknow's Ekana Stadium, finally got deceived by a slow googly from Kuldeep Yadav and sliced one high and not very handsome for Tristan Stubbs to pouch in the 10th over.
By that point, Lucknow were already fancying it wasn't their day, especially after a thunderous drive from Marsh had been tipped on to the stumps at the non-striker's end by bowler Mukesh Kumar, leaving the Aussie's fellow opener and key man, skipper Rishabh Pant, stranded and dismissed for just seven in just the third over.
"Best way to recover from my dismissal is to ignore it as you can't control it," Pant sighed.
"The way we batted, we couldn't get a partnership for long ... there was enough help with the new ball, but you can't put pressure on the opposition with 140."
Lucknow actually did pretty well to cobble together 141 after their dismal start, with Abdul Samad's innings-high 36 off 25 balls doing most to salvage respectability in the face of fine bowling from Kuldeep (2-31), Thangarasu Natarajan (3-29) and Lungi Ngidi (3-27).
Briefly, it looked as their sub-par total still might be enough as KL Rahul fell first ball of the innings, caught at point off Mohammad Shami, while fellow quick Prince Yadav (2-20) followed up with two quick strikes as Delhi slumped to 4-26.
But that was the end of the fun for the home fans as impact sub Sameer Rizvi tamed up with South African Stubbs to first put together a repair job before the pair ended up dominating to ease past the target on 4-145 with 17 balls still remaining.
Rizvi's unbeaten 70 off 47 balls featured five sixes, while Stubbs was happy to play second fiddle, finishing on 39no off 32 balls, with the pair having put together an unbroken partnership of 119.
