After five consecutive defeats in the Indian Premier League, the Delhi Capitals team, which has won the last two matches, will take the field against Sunrisers Hyderabad here on Saturday, then its hopes will be better than the batsmen.
The role of the bowlers was important in helping Delhi win the last two matches. The last match of the team was also against Sunrisers Hyderabad. This low-scoring match played in Hyderabad was won by Delhi by seven runs.
Delhi Capitals captain David Warner made excellent use of the bowlers against his former team. The spin duo of Akshar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav kept the Hyderabad batsmen in check and then Mukesh Kumar brilliantly defended 12 runs in the last over. Ishant Sharma and Enrich Norkia also impressed in this match. The biggest problem for the team is his batting. In the last match, the team lost five wickets for 62 runs. With the restrained batting of Manish Pandey and Akshar Patel, Delhi scored 128 runs in 20 overs.
Warner has carried the burden of the team’s batting in most of the matches but due to lack of good support from the other end, he is not able to play freely. He has played the most dot balls in the powerplay this season. In the last match, the team started the innings with Phil Salt in place of Prithvi Shaw, who was running in bad rhythm, but he failed to open the account. Mitchell Marsh looked good during his short innings but his 31 runs in five innings tells a different story.
Sarfaraz Khan and Aman Hakim Khan have also struggled and things could have turned embarrassing for Delhi this IPL if Akshar didn’t contribute with the bat in most of the matches. To fully utilize the skills of this spin all-rounder, he needs to be sent higher up the batting order. On the other hand, the Sunrisers team was in a position to win the match for most of the time in the last match. However, the team had to bear the brunt of the slow start. Harry Brook has struggled to score runs in the Powerplay after his maiden century in the IPL. Batsmen like Mayank Agarwal, Rahul Tripathi and Abhishek Sharma have not been consistent in their performances.
The bowlers of the team, however, have put in impressive performances. In the last match, Bhuvneshwar Kumar took two wickets in just 11 runs in four overs, while Washington Sundar stopped Delhi from scoring a big score by taking three wickets in the eighth over of the match.
Teams:
Delhi Capitals: David Warner (captain), Prithvi Shaw, Sarfaraz Khan, Aman Hakim Khan, Abhishek Porel (wicketkeeper), Akshar Patel, Khaleel Ahmed, Kuldeep Yadav, Rovman Powell, Riley Rossouw, Anrich Norkia, 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. Sunrisers Hyderabad: Aiden Markram (c), Abdul Samad, Rahul Tripathi, Glenn Phillips, Abhishek Sharma, Marco Jansen, Washington Sundar, Fazalhaq Farooqui, Karthik Tyagi, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, T Natarajan, Umran Malik, Harry Brook, Mayank Agarwal, Heinrich Klaasen , Adil Rashid, Mayank Markande, Vivrant Sharma, Samarth Vyas, Sanveer Singh, Upendra Yadav, Mayank Dagar, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Akil Hosin and Anmolpreet Singh. The match will start at 7:30 pm.
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