Frustrated with three consecutive defeats, the Delhi Capitals team will be eyeing to open their points account in the Indian Premier League 2023 when they take on the Mumbai Indians here on Tuesday.
While Delhi have started their campaign with a hat-trick of defeats, Mumbai Indians have also suffered defeats in their opening two matches and will look to avoid a hat-trick of defeats. Both Delhi and Mumbai, who are at the bottom of the points table, are struggling to make a balanced team combination.
Delhi has made frequent changes in its XI but the team has not been able to find the way to victory. Delhi is clearly missing its charismatic captain and wicket-keeper batsman Rishabh Pant.
Pant has been ruled out of the entire tournament after being seriously injured in a car accident. In his absence, the team is struggling to increase the run rate in the middle overs while as wicketkeeper, it has given chances to Sarfaraz Khan in the first match and Ishan Porel in the remaining two matches, who do not have much experience of wicketkeeping in big matches. Sarfaraz does not do wicketkeeping even at the domestic level.
Delhi has faced one-sided defeat in all the three matches so far. They were defeated by Lucknow Supergiants by 50 runs in the first match and had to face a six-wicket defeat against Gujarat Titans in the next match. In the last match also against the Royals, the team had to face a crushing defeat by 57 runs. Skipper David Warner (158 runs in three matches) has been in good form but hasn’t lived up to his reputation with the bat, scoring runs at a strike rate of just 117 so far.
His opening partner Prithvi Shaw (12, 7 and zero) has managed only 19 runs in three matches so far. The team has roped in batsmen like Sarfaraz, Mitchell Marsh, Rovman Powell, Riley Roseau, Lalit Yadav, Manish Pandey and Aman Hakeem Khan in the middle order but none has been able to play a big innings so far and the team needs a better performance against Mumbai. would be expected. The team has a chance to feed Phil Salt as a wicket-keeper batsman but in such a situation he will have to drop another foreign player from the playing XI.
The bowling of the team also looks weak. The team went into the first match with all five Indian bowlers in Khaleel Ahmed, Mukesh Kumar, Chetan Sakaria, Kuldeep Yadav and Akshar Patel but they failed to make an impact.
The team gave South African storm bowler Enrique Norkia a chance in the next two matches but he too could not perform as expected. He picked up two wickets for 39 runs against the Titans while against the Royals he went for 44 runs and went wicketless. In fast bowling, the team has the option of Lungi Ngidi of South Africa and Mustafizur Rahman of Bangladesh but the team will have to balance the combination of foreign players.
On the other hand, the Mumbai team, led by Indian captain Rohit Sharma, also faced a one-sided defeat in their first two matches. He was defeated by Royal Challengers Bangalore by eight wickets in the first match and Chennai Super Kings defeated by seven wickets in the last match.
Like Delhi, both the batsmen and bowlers of Mumbai have failed. Apart from Rohit, the team’s batting line-up includes impressive names like Ishan Kishan, Suryakumar Yadav, Cameron Green, Tim David and Tilak Verma. But barring Tilak Verma’s unbeaten 84 against RCB, none of his batsmen could even touch the 35-run mark in the two matches.
Mumbai’s fast bowling has weakened due to Jasprit Bumrah’s exit and Jofra Archer not being in rhythm. Jason Behrendorff, Green, Archer and Arshad Khan haven’t been able to trouble the opposition batsmen while Piyush Chawla, Hrithik Shokeen and Kumar Karthikeya have also struggled to find wickets in the spin department. If Mumbai has to make a comeback, better performance will be expected from the opening pair of captain Rohit and Ishan. Suryakumar, the world’s number one T20 International batsman, and Green will also have to live up to their reputation.
Teams are as follows:
Delhi Daredevils: David Warner (Captain), Prithvi Shaw, Mitchell Marsh, Sarfaraz Khan, Aman Hakim Khan, Abhishek Porel, Akshar Patel, Khaleel Ahmed, Kuldeep Yadav, Rovman Powell, Riley Roseau, Enrique Norquia, Mustafizur Rahman, Chetan Sakaria, Mukesh Kumar, Phil Salt, Lungi Engidi, Praveen Dubey, Lalit Yadav, Ripple Patel, Vicky Ostwal, Ishant Sharma, Manish Pandey, Kamlesh Nagerkoti and Yash Dhul.
Rohit Sharma (c), Suryakumar Yadav, Tim David, Dewald Brewis, Tilak Verma, Ishan Kishan, Tristan Stubbs, Vishnu Vinod, Cameron Green, Arjun Tendulkar, Ramandeep Singh, Shams Mulani, Riley Meredith, Nehal Wadhera, Hrithik Shokin, Arshad Khan , Duane Jenson, Piyush Chawla, Kumar Karthikeya, Raghav Goyal, Jofra Archer, Jason Behrendorff and Akash Madhwal. Time: The match will start at 7.30.
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