By no means, Delhi Capitals’ (DC) four-wicket win over Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in Match 28 of Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 perfect. In fact, it was far from perfect. And yet, somehow, David Warner and Co managed to scrape past Nitish Rana’s men in a match that was delayed for 90 minutes due to rain at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi.
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On Thursday, it was the Delhi Capitals bowlers who performed clinically well than their batters (Barring David Warner). Axar Patel has a habit of producing big scores with the bat, but on Thursday, it was his day to finish the match for his team.
And he did so, with an unbeaten 22-ball 19. Manish Pandey got runs for DC but probably not at the desired strike-rate that his team would have wanted. He managed to find a couple of boundaries, but was eventually dismissed for 21 off 23 balls (A strike-rate of 91.30).
And Prithvi Shaw, who came into bat as an Impact Player, failed to make much of an impact after he was dismissed for 13 by Varun Chakaravarthy.
Most of DC’s batters failed to fire, and yet again, the onus was on David Warner, who notched up his fourth half-century of the ongoing season.
Once again, DC may have been a bit too dependant on Warner, but was it a good game that they won?
Warner, though, felt it was just an ‘okay game’ for DC to win.
“Finally. We scrapped our way to it. Over to Hyderabad. We are really proud of the bowling unit. We did exceptionally well to get wickets in the powerplay. We lost wickets in cluster. We are very honest to each other. We discussed about areas to improve upon. We played an Okay game,” Warner said at the presentation ceremony.
Warner has only one request to his players with this message: for the batters to improve their scores and the runs would come by accordingly.
So much so that, the difference among the top two DC batters this season is considerably big. Warner leads the Capitals’ charts for batters with 285 runs, and behind him is Axar Patel, with 148 runs. And third on their team batting chart is Manish Pandey with 97 runs.
Warner’s strike-rate a worry for DC?
While Warner has notched up four half-centuries this season already, the DC skipper’s overall strike rate, of 120.76, might be a worrying sign for the Delhi Capitals.
Even against KKR, Warner scored 57 off 41 deliveries at a strike-rate of 139.02, which may nit still be enough while chasing a modest total of 128.
And when we take the overall strike-rate in IPL this season, Heinrich Klaasen leads the charts with a strike-rate of 236.36, followed by MS Dhoni (210.71).
Even though the duo have scored considerably lesser runs than Warner, their strike-rate speaks volumes, and strike-rate of a batter comes into focus during a big pressure run-chase.
Probably, losing of wickets at regular intervals is taking a toll on Warner, thereby making him unable to play freely as he would like too.
And moreover, DC’s middle-order has been hurt with the absence of Rishabh Pant this season, and that may even out more pressure on Warner should the other batters fail to step up.
Prithvi Shaw’s form a concern
All Prithvi Shaw has managed to score this season has been 47 runs from six games at an unimpressive strike-rate of 117.50.
On Thursday, he was named as the Impact Player for Delhi Capitals when he walked out to bat along with Warner.
However, he failed to make much of an impact, managing just 13 runs before being dismissed by Varun Chakaravarthy.
Among all his six innings so far, Shaw’s highest score has been 15 against Mumbai Indians, and if Shaw does not fire in the upcoming matches should the DC team management continue with him, the DC batting unit might be in for a major headache.
Shaw has been faced with criticism for his unimpressive start to the season, and one of them to want to see a different opener with Warner is former Australia cricketer Tom Moody, who wishes to see Mitchell Marsh open with Warner.
“You’ve got to make a tough call on certain players that aren’t showing any light at the end of the tunnel. And on the evidence of what we’ve seen so far with Prithvi Shaw, it may well be that IPL 2023 may not be his year where he has the impact that we all hoped that he was going to have,”Moody was quoted as saying by ESPNCricinfo.
“He’s done that before recently and he’s done it successfully. He’s naturally an enforcer, so that would complement Warner it would help him as well,” Moddy added.
Is DC’s batting unit better off without Prithvi Shaw, and should they look for a second option for an opener? Only time will tell.
For now, DC can celebrate their win over KKR, but in a tournament like IPL, games keep coming in thick and fast, and there’s no time to rest.
They cannot avoid any further slip-up, and will look to get their batting unit sorted before their next game against Sunrisers Hyderabad on 24 April.
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