Delhi Capitals Loss to Sunrisers Hyderabad: A Breakdown

Once again, it seems like Delhi Capitals is far away from the title. After losing to Hyderabad, Delhi has slipped to seventh place in the points table. It was a match that was initially out of Delhi’s hands, but the Delhi bowlers made a comeback.

Batting woes and Pant’s captaincy under scrutiny

In the chase, Rovman Powell played well and Abhishek Porel provided the momentum. Delhi had scored 130 runs in 8 overs, but even when they needed less than 12 runs per over, the team lost the match for the first time in 67 days.

The biggest reason for this is believed to be captain Rishabh Pant. He scored 44 runs off 35 balls, but when the required run rate was around 15, he was batting at 16 runs off 21 balls. It seemed like he wanted to take the game deep.

But when a team chases a big score, they don’t have any breathing space. They need to score every ball and keep the opposition under pressure, which Delhi completely failed to do.

Let’s start from the beginning. What happened against Hyderabad?

First, when Lalit Yadav came to bowl, it was clear that Delhi was afraid of Hyderabad’s batting. He gave away 41 runs in two overs and Hyderabad set the highest powerplay score in IPL history – 125 runs.

The second big thing was that the Delhi bowlers were quite defensive. They were trying to save runs rather than take wickets. However, when they tried to take wickets, they got wickets, and it must be admitted that Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, and Enrique Nortje bowled well in the middle overs and brought Delhi back to some extent.

But once again, Khaleel Ahmed and Mukesh Kumar conceded 36 runs in the last two overs, and Hyderabad was once again far ahead in the game because their bowling was good.

Should Rishabh Pant be part of India's World Cup squad?🤨🧐

Ricky Ponting certainly thinks so.#IPL2024 #T20WorldCup #T20WorldCup2024 pic.twitter.com/YmccKJdDg4

— Cricbuzz (@cricbuzz) April 23, 2024

Now let’s look at Delhi’s batting

Delhi’s love affair with Warner is not over. T20 cricket is not made for David Warner and especially during the chase, not much should be expected from him.

And that’s all Fraser McGurk did well. He scored the fastest half-century of this IPL and there is something special about this player and we will definitely talk about him in another video.

It is clear that if McGurk had batted for the full 14 or 15 overs, the match would have been one-sided for Delhi, but even then, he had made the match for Delhi. From there, it can be said that it was easier for Delhi to lose the match than to win.

Delhi had scored 131 runs in eight overs and a lot was expected from Rishabh Pant, who came to bat. He was neither able to rotate the strike nor hit boundaries.

And it is surprising that despite being on the crease, Delhi scored only 65 runs between the 9th and 19th overs, and when Pant came to bat, the required run rate was around 11. The match was out of Delhi’s hands three overs before the end of the match.