Lack of batting teeth comes back to bite Delhi Capitals
BARRING AXAR PATEL, NO INDIAN BATTER IN THE LINE=UP HAS EVEN TALLIED 200 RUNS FOR THE SEASON
NEW DELHI: It may now seem ages ago, but Delhi Capitals were arguably the best IPL team across 2020 and 2021. They lost to Mumbai Indians in the final in 2020 and topped the league phase the next year before losing narrowly in Qualifier 2 against Kolkata Knight Riders.
Having become the first team to get knocked out in 2023, with two league matches still left to play, those highs appear all too transient.
At the Ferozeshah Kotla ground on Saturday, in their penultimate home game of the season, Delhi sank to their eighth defeat in 12 games, ending even a theoretical possibility of a playoff berth.
What will particularly rankle is the manner of defeat, collapsing from 69/0 to 88/6 in the space of 23 deliveries to eventually fall short of a target of 168 by 32 runs.
“That’s not really acceptable from an IPL team. To get yourself so far in front of the game and then not even get close, we fell around 30 (32) runs short,” DC bowling coach James Hopes told reporters in a blunt assessment of the defeat.
The performance epitomised their season, with the batting unit failing to deliver time and again. While the performances of Delhi’s overseas batters have also largely been underwhelming, they at least produced a few innings of substance. That cannot be said of the Indian batting contingent though.
Whether it is Prithvi Shaw, Sarfaraz Khan, Manish Pandey, Yash Dhull, Lalit Yadav or Aman Khan, they haven’t been able to translate their ability into performances.
The numbers make for grim reading. Barring Axar Patel, whose primary role is as a leftarm spinner, no Indian batter has crossed a tally of 200 runs for the season. That Pandey — with 160 runs at an average of 17.77 and a strike rate of 109.58 — has the best record among their specialist domestic batters says all you need to know about their disheartening campaign.
While the players need to shoulder the blame, the starstudded team management headed by coach Ricky Ponting will also come under the gaze. Just a couple of seasons ago, their batting unit including Rishabh Pant, Shreyas Iyer and Shaw was the envy of opponents.
Pant’s injury aside, they are paying the price for parting ways with Iyer after the 2021 season and not getting the best out of Shaw’s mercurial talent.
Have they frittered away the foundation they built in 2020 and 2021?
“We’ve still got the same culture around the group. The boys are training hard and preparing the right way,” said Hopes, who has been with the franchise since 2018.
“We’ve obviously lost our captain Pant and Iyer is not there anymore. It’s been a really poor season. We’ve batted well twice in 12 games. That’s probably not good enough in an IPL season to be anywhere near the final.”
Prabhsimran Singh’s century for Punjab Kings is the kind of contribution Delhi have missed from their Indian batters this season. “Throughout the tournament, we haven’t had a young* player play an innings of the substance that was played (by Prabhsimran) tonight. We probably expected a little more from some of our guys, and it just hasn’t panned out that way,” Hopes said.
There’s perhaps a lesson to be gleaned from Punjab’s perseverance with Prabhsimran. The batter was all of 18 when he was signed by the franchise for ₹4.8 crore ahead of the 2019 season. Until this year though, he couldn’t make his limited opportunities count. He played just six games across four seasons from 2019 to 2022, managing a top score of 16.
His auction price came down to ₹60 lakh last year, but flashes of his stroke-making ability have finally allowed the 22-year-old a prolonged run this season.
“It’s just the beginning. He is young. There’s a lot of talent. He has got better. When a young talent is getting better, we always need to persist with him,” Punjab Kings bowling coach Sunil Joshi, a national selector till recently, said on Saturday.
That should be a key takeaway for Delhi once their campaign ends next Saturday. After all, a strong domestic core — whether with bat or ball — is a necessity for IPL success.