Delhi holds edge over Punjab as Nortje likely to feature

Delhi Capitals (DC) skipper Rishabh Pant will aim to display better tactical acumen in Catch-22 situations when his team takes on Punjab Kings (PBKS) in an Indian Premier League (IPL) match here on Sunday.

The fixture promises to be a battle of brittle middle-orders. Both teams endured defeat in their previous game, but Delhi is a better side on paper. Pant, relatively inexperienced in terms of IPL captaincy, lost the plot in the last game, where he didn’t finish his best bowler Ravichandran Ashwin’s quota and instead used pacer Tom Curran.

The likely addition of fast bowler Anrich Nortje in the playing eleven will bolster Pant’s bowling attack, which lost its bearings in the previous outing.

Delhi’s rival Punjab suffered a batting collapse against Chennai Super Kings (CSK), with Deepak Chahar’s extra bounce and seam movement causing the damage. So, KL Rahul versus Kagiso Rabada and Chris Woakes bowling to Chris Gayle could be as enticing as Prithvi Shaw encountering the guile of Mohammed

Shami and Shikhar Dhawan trying to unsettle Arshdeep Singh.

Rajasthan Royals (RR) pacer Jaydev Unadkat showed that there are some chinks in Shaw’s armoury and Arshdeep could be used to expose that. While Ajinkya Rahane’s lack of power hitting and Marcus Stoinis’s indifferent show is affecting the DC middle-order, Mayank Agarwal’s bad patch coupled with Nicholas Pooran’s susceptibility to short balls are not great news for Punjab.

Punjab’s two high-priced pacers, Jhye Richardson and Riley Meredith, haven’t set the stage on fire. Neither has Murugan Ashwin, a spinner who has done nothing of note that would force Pant and Ricky Ponting to have sleepless nights. So, Anil Kumble and Rahul may like to think of Ravi Bishnoi as an option.