Name: Delhi Capitals- Captain: Shreyas Iyer
- Head Coach: Ricky Ponting
- Home Ground: Feroz Shah Kotla Ground, Delhi
- Squad members: 25
- Best result: Semi-finals in IPL 2008, 2009; Playoffs in IPL 2012, 2019
There are only 3 franchises from current Indian Premier League (IPL) teams that haven’t won a title yet, one being Delhi Capitals. In fact, it’s the only team to have never featured in an IPL final yet. They thought that changing their name from Daredevils to Capitals might work and to a certain extent it did, reaching the playoffs stage in IPL 2019 after 6 consecutive seasons of finishing in the bottom half of the points table.
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This team is known for youthful exuberance but many may say it lacks experience by a long, long way. Delhi happens to be the only franchise that has a completely Indian batting order led by captain Shreyas Iyer, who himself is pretty young. However, the 25-year is maturing as a cricketer with three of his 5 IPL seasons having 400+ runs and IPL 2019 being the best of them with 463 runs in 16 games. His last 4 international scores for India in New Zealand – 62, 52, 103, 33*.
Talking about that batting, they have Prithvi Shaw at the top who scored 353 runs in 16 games in IPL 2019. This man is probably one of the most talented batsmen in Indian right now, with a technique that reminds you of a mixture of Sachin and Sehwag. Rishabh Pant is another supremely talented batsman who loves this form of the game and ended as their highest scorer in IPL 2019, but these two are prime examples of inexperience and those who will most likely crack under pressure.
To combat that in the batting, they bought Shikhar Dhawan in the IPL 2019 auction and he was one of the 14 players to be retained by Delhi Capitals for IPL 2020, along with 11 others who were purchased at the auction. A mistake I think Delhi made at the IPL 2020 auction is to add more top-order batsmen to their squad in trading Ajinkya Rahane and buying English opener Jason Roy, which will give them plenty of dilemmas.
They made it even worse by adding Shimron Hetmyer and Alex Carey to the DC squad. Now all of these are really good T20 specialist batsmen but how do they choose from a top order consisting of Shreyas, Prithvi, Rahane, Carey, Roy, Hetmyer, and Dhawan. Clearly, they didn’t do all that well in the auction but they will want to make up for that with their signings in the bowling department.
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However, they seem to have made life tough for themselves in the bowling attack too, with 4 specialist spinners in Axar Patel, Ravi Ashwin, Amit Mishra and Nepal spinner Sandeep Lamichhane. What this means is someone as experienced as Amit Mishra who has 157 wickets in 147 IPL games may be left out of the playing eleven. Ashwin and Axar seem like likely starter, while Lamichhane may also get the nod, because they don’t have the best pacers.
Caribbean pacer Keemo Paul was retained and he may get the selection in the first eleven because of a decent debut season in IPL 2019 where he bagged 9 wickets in 8 games. He is someone who can if required too, but I feel a lot of pressure will come on the Indian pacers – Ishant Sharma and Mohit Sharma – the latter being signed for as little as Rs.50 Lakh, and someone who will be wanting to prove he’s still got it in him. Stoinis is one of the most versatile players in the squad, though he doesn’t have a great IPL record under his belt.
South African pacer Kagiso Rabada is one of the leading limited overs bowlers in the world at the moment and there’s no way he can be left out of the team, with 25 wickets in just 12 games in IPL 2019. What that means is they will have to choose from one between Keemo Paul, Lamichhane and Anrich Nortje, who came in for Chris Woakes. It’s unlikely they go in for three overseas bowlers because they also have Marcus Stoinis in the squad.
DELHI CAPITALS SQUAD FOR IPL 2020: Prithvi Shaw,
Jason Roy, Daniel Sams, Shikhar Dhawan, Ishant Sharma, Avesh Khan, Sandeep Lamichhane, Kagiso Rabada, Keemo Paul, Ajinkya Rahane, Mohit Sharma, Lalit Yadav, Axar Patel, Amit Mishra, Harshal Patel, Ravichandran Ashwin,Chris Woakes, Anrich Nortje, Rishabh Pant, Alex Carey, Shimron Hetmyer, Tushar Deshpande, Marcus Stoinis, Shreyas Iyer (C).
Apart from Pant, he’s the only one in the squad who can come in during the death overs and give the ball a massive slog or two. Let’s not forget that his cutters could be very useful on these Indian pitches, though he’ll want to forget his dismal stats of just 2 wickets in 10 games in IPL 2019! All in all, they were known as the team heavily dependent on domestic talent and they tried to over-compensate going into IPL 2020. Stay tuned to ReadScoops.com for updates on DC’s IPL 2020 journey…
