Several admirable individual performances but a lack of collective one constituted a middling IPL 2024 for Delhi Capitals. Yet, there are reasons which will keep the franchise positive despite finishing sixth in the point table.
For starters, Rishabh Pant returned to cricket in some fashion, finishing the season as team’s highest-scorer with 446 runs in 13 innings at a strike rate of over 155 while averaging 40.54.
Ahead of the season, DC was relying heavily on David Warner, Prithvi Shaw, and Mitchell Marsh to do the bulk of scoring in the batting department with Pant making his comeback.
However, injuries and poor form had Delhi on the backfoot with only one win in the first five matches.
Inconsistent top order
One of the major reasons for Capitals’ inconsistency was its unsettled top order. In 14 games, DC played 11 different top order (1-3) combinations and five different opening pairs with Shaw and Warner as openers most times, five.
Warner played eight innings scoring 168 runs while averaging 21 and striking at 134.40. After playing in the first half of the tournament, he kept going in and out of the eleven; the hand injury during the middle stage didn’t help his case either. Marsh was ruled out owing to hamstring injury after playing four innings, scoring 61 runs.
Shaw, a proven opener in IPL, blew hot and cold as well - scoring 198 runs in eight innings at an average of 24.75.
It was after the first five games that DC introduced Jake Fraser-McGurK and in only his first match of the season, the Australian scored a 35-ball fifty, batting at number three.
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Fraser-McGurk finished the season with a strike rate of 234.04 - highest among batters who have scored more than 200 runs this season. The 22-year-old was particularly tough to bowl during the PowerPlay: 266 out of his 330 runs this season came in the first six overs.
“Some of the things he’s done - I think he’s made three 20-ball fifties in this tournament, so he along with Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma have been the stand-out PowerPlay batsmen in this entire tournament,” DC head coach Ricky Ponting had said.
Rise of backups
Apart from individual performances by Fraser-McGurk and Pant, Abhishek Porel and Tristan Stubbs too had a memorable season.
Porel was tried in six different positions - from opener to number nine - but the 21-year-old stood up to the challenge and scored 327 runs in 12 innings at a strike rate of 159.51. In three innings where he opened, the wicketkeeper batter scored 159 at a strike rate of 165.62; Porel batted the most at number three - four - and scored 76 runs.
“I’ve seen extreme growth in Abishek Porel in this IPL. In fact, looking back to the start of last season, obviously (with) Rishabh’s accident, we needed to bring in some wicketkeepers into our squad after the auction. We tried a lot of guys, a lot of guys that played, more senior guys than Porel, but the moment that I laid eyes on him, I knew that he was a very special talent,” Ponting had told the media.
Stubbs, a replacement of Harry Brook, handled Delhi’s death overs batting and excelled at it. The middle-order batter scored 378 runs in 13 innings at a strike rate close to 191 while averaging 63.
“I can see that this is a player for the next five years if we can go there,” Delhi’s assistant coach Pravin Amre said.
Expensive bowlers
Similarly in the bowling department, despite some decent individual performances, DC struggled to keep the scoring rate in check. The team recorded the second worst economy rate this season - 9.93 - after Sunrisers Hyderabad’s 10.03.
Khaleel Ahmed, who finished with 17 wickets, relatively handled the new ball well, bowling at an economy of 8.87 in the first six overs while picking eight wickets. Mukesh Kumar, too, picked 17 but was slightly more expensive.
Spinners Kuldeep Yadav (16) and Axar Patel (11) did their role well picking 27 wickets among themselves.
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