Mumbai: After yet another season which has seen them crash out at the league stage, the Delhi Capitals (DC) have been left to lick their wounds. An entire revamp of their coaching staff and playing personnel couldn’t change their fortunes. What would really hurt them is that they won their first four, in fact, five out of six in IPL 2025, but faltered badly later.On Wednesday night at the Wankhede Stadium, the visitors never looked like they would suffer a comprehensive 59-run defeat when they controlled the first 18 overs of the match — a phase in which they forced the Mumbai Indians to play 38 dot balls. However, a stunning assault by Suryakumar Yadav (73 not out off 43 balls) and Naman Dhir (24 not out off 8 balls) in the final two overs undid all the good work that their spinners Kuldeep Yadav (1-22 in four overs) and Vipraj Nigam (0-25 in four overs) did for them, strangling the batsmen as they conceded just 47 between them in eight overs.The fact that his seamers Mukesh Kumar (27 runs in the 19th over) and Dushmantha Chameera (21 runs in the final over) were thrashed for 48 in the final two overs turned out to be the turning point of a match they had to win to stay alive in the competition, admitted Hemang Badani, the Delhi Capitals head coach.“The game changed in the last two overs that we bowled. The 18 overs that were bowled by us were consistent and spot on. Our execution wasn’t to our expectation in the end, and we ended up giving away 48 in 12 balls. I never deny the fact that you can’t get 50 or 60 off 30 balls anymore. But we are speaking of 48 off 12 balls. That’s a lot. We are speaking of 24 runs an over. That’s not something you would ideally want any side to be getting off you,” Badani said at the post-match press conference.
“We could have read the game better. We could have understood that the surface was slower, could have gone to the cutters, could have also gone to the wide yorkers. You would expect bowlers of international level to come and nail the yorkers, and if you don’t do that, players like Surya, who have been around long enough, will punish you.”Rueing the absence of skipper Axar Patelfrom this do-or-die game for his side due to illness, the DC head coach said, “With the way the ball spun, the target was a bit more than par. Anything around that 160-165 mark would have been a good total. No excuses, and it’s just that the better side won. But I would like to add here that someone like Axar would have made a massive difference to us. A left-arm spinner on this surface would have been very helpful for us. Moreover, his left-hand batting would have also countered (Mitchell) Santner.But as I said, the better side won, and I wish them well.”Reflecting on a campaign that started with a bang for his side but ended on a whimper, the 48-year-old said that his team missed out on some near-wins, citing the 12-run defeat after suffering a horrible collapse that saw them lose eight wickets for 58 runs back home in Delhi. “For me, it’s a marathon. We had a great sprint to start with. We had a massive start to start. But then, we’ve also had games where I genuinely felt that we could have won, and we just didn’t finish those games.Like for instance, even [against] Mumbai at Delhi, we were cantering along and lost the game from there. Even against KKR, we had to get 60 in six [69 off 41 balls] with seven wickets in hand, two set batters [du Plessis and Axar]. If you want to win this competition, go to the playoffs, you want to ideally finish those games, and if you are not able to do so, then you have no one else to blame but yourself. We as a side could have done better.”Who’s that IPL player?Indeed, a major reason they were knocked out early was that they didn’t have a settled opening pair; in fact, they used as many as seven opening pairs during their campaign. In a tournament where teams thrived on their openers providing them explosive starts, DC’s openers averaged 19.23 in the season, the lowest among all sides. Justifying the need to try different opening combinations, Badani said, “A settled opening pair is only possible when your opening pair gives you a start.If you don’t get starts, you are bound to make changes to try and fill that gap, fill that void. While other sides have had great powerplay with the bat, we haven’t had those, unfortunately. Opening at the top was a worry for us.”The Delhi Capitals will now look to salvage their pride when they round off their season with their final game against Punjab Kings on May 24 at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur.
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