Delhi Capitals: A season of ifs, buts; slow start, late push, Rishabh Pant's comeback and numerous positives
Delhi Capitals ended their campaign in the 2024 edition of the IPL with a 19-run win against Lucknow Super Giants on Tuesday, May 14 at home. The Capitals have 14 points in their kitty but are unlikely to qualify as they have to depend on outrageous permutations and combinations because of poor NRR.
How do you sum up a campaign that had more positives than downsides but still the team ended up not qualifying for the playoffs? Often grouped as a part of the 'holy trinity', Delhi Capitals and Royal Challengers Bengaluru had similar campaigns in the 2024 edition of the IPL but call it luck or lack of it, or a bit of inconsistency, one team is on the heels of a spot in the playoffs and other has to hope for Sunrisers to lose by 150-plus runs combined in their last two games, Lucknow Super Giants to not win big against the Mumbai Indians, the mountains to move, two parallel lines to meet and the water to stop existing. The last one is still possible but Delhi Capitals have left things a little too late.
Maybe if Rishabh Pant wasn't banned in the last game against RCB, or those four catches wouldn't have been dropped or the Bash Brothers for Delhi, Jake Fraser-McGurk and Tristan Stubbs wouldn't have been run out, the Capitals would have been actually playing for something in their final home game at the Arun Jaitley Stadium. The last two games summed up Delhi's campaign in a nutshell. A season of lot of ifs and buts and what could have been rather than what is.
14 points after the season they had in 2023 is a major improvement given that the Capitals did a few good recruitments in the auction and the biggest difference being Rishabh Pant's captaincy and presence as a batter. 446 runs in a season after coming back from a life-threatening accident following a 14-month-long period of recovery and rehab, is a pretty good number when put into context with that of a 155 strike rate. Pant took a few games to get going but in saying that the injuries and pull-outs didn't help the Capitals initially and they did come to the rescue later on.
Anrich Nortje didn't hit his straps at all, going for 20-plus runs overs four times and that cost Delhi too many times to keep him in the side. Jhye Richardson didn't give them what they were looking for. Mitchell Marsh's form was too erratic before he too left the tournament midway. The only shining light amid the disappointments was Tristan Stubbs, who initially wouldn't even have been in the starting XI if Harry Brook had come to play. Brook pulled out and Stubbs got the No 5/6 and made it his own and how.
A strike rate of 190 in the season, 262 in the death overs and a colossal 320 from 18-20, in addition to those rapid legs on the field and a couple of handy overs going with a wicketkeeping option. Stubbs is as good a package deal in T20 cricket as it can get around the world and Delhi got him pretty cheap for just INR 50 Lakh. Delhi missed Kuldeep Yadav for four games and similarly Mukesh Kumar as well. Thus injuries did add to Delhi's losing cause a bit, especially at the start and then somehow they turned it around.
Jake Fraser-McGurk was probably the most genius addition to the DC outfit, who replaced Lungi Ngidi, as he would go slam-bang from the start and knock sides out of the water in just 3-4 overs. Kuldeep Yadav basically taking care of the middle overs helped tremendously and after a poor start, the emergence of the J&K quick Rasikh Salam was another impressive factor for Delhi. The old warhorse Ishant Sharma just reminded everyone that he has still got the skill and that the experience can't be bought in a supermarket. Those initial wickets in the powerplay starting from the Gujarat Titans game played their part.
Thus, Fraser-McGurk firing at the top, Abishek Porel finding his feet over the course of the season, Stubbs providing those late booster shots and all this with an all-Indian bowling attack. The experienced overseas players, especially David Warner, Mitchell Marsh and Anrich Nortje not turning up did hurt the Capitals a bit before they held on to the combination that worked for them. Yes, there will be disappointment that they couldn't qualify for the playoffs but will be glad that they punched above their weight despite their overseas stars not performing.
Looking ahead at the IPL 2025 mega auction, Delhi now also have a core group of players in the form of Rishabh Pant, Kuldeep Yadav, Tristan Stubbs, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Rasikh Salam, Mukesh Kumar and Axar Patel depending upon the number of retentions. Delhi didn't qualify even once in the current three-year cycle as they missed out twice just by a small margin, in 2022 and 2024.
Will the support staff be together next year? It's uncertain but yes, one department Delhi really needs to improve is scouting their local talent. The likes of Yash Dhull, Sumik Kumar, Kumar Kushagra and Ricky Bhui just didn't look like IPL material. Dhull didn't even play a single game in the ongoing season which shows the level of confidence the management had in his abilities in T20. Prithvi Shaw, Warner and Nortje might have played their last for Delhi but they each had individual shining moments for the side at some point.
It was a bizarre season to be summed up. Even though Delhi had some brilliant moments on the field and a few really magnificent wins somehow they never looked like a playoffs team. Like they could capitulate any time, they would have the highest of highs and the had lowest of lows but those highs didn't give a feeling of a champion team, like the whole engine was in sync. Some parts were, some parts maybe, the others not. And maybe that is probably why they are where they are on the table.
However, this core of 7-8 players (including retentions and RTM) should keep Delhi in good stead in years to come.
You must be wondering why the third team in the holy trinity of teams not to have won a title since the beginning of the IPL, Punjab Kings, wasn't mentioned even once. Well, whatever be said about a team underperforming and being inconsistent as consistently as Punjab doesn't deserve a mention. From being one of the favourites to qualify for the playoffs to languishing at the bottom, Punjab have disappointed the most and have not qualified for a decade now. Even RCB and Delhi would want to separate themselves from Punjab.