Early batting nerves make it hard for Delhi Capitals to bat.
Ajit Agarakar, the assistant coach for Delhi Capitals, said after the team’s second straight loss in IPL 2023 that there are a lot of problems, but David Warner‘s batting isn’t one of them.
But while Delhi Capitals’ innings started off well, David Warner‘s didn’t.
Even though Mohammed Shami‘s lines were all over the place in the first over, he had already sized up the captain of the Delhi Capitals. He did this by moving the ball in the air, putting him in a tight spot, beating him on the inside edge, and cutting him in half.
Early nerves could have been ignored because Shami kept DC’s scoreboard moving and gave the first two batters time to get used to the game. The pacer changed his length after starting with a looser that was too far to the outside. But just for one ball. Then he sent a bunch of packages down the leg side. In his first nine balls, he gave up 20 runs, 10 of which were due to wides.
When the line of operation was in charge, Prithvi Shaw edged a pull shot to mid on, and Warner didn’t have many answers to a simple trick: length deliveries on the off and middle stump channel.
He wasn’t the only one. Even Joshua Little kept the DC captain in check with a similar strategy, and Warner had a hard time finding chances to score. On rare occasions, he did, like when Shami strayed down the leg side and gave him a hit for a boundary or when Rashid Khan made a mistake at covers and let two easy runs through.
Warner was also quick to point out length mistakes, like when Hardik Pandya went a little shorter or when Alzarri Joseph went a little longer. Even though they made some mistakes, the Gujarat Titans had no reason to change their plan during Warner’s 32-ball stay in the middle, which only led to 37 runs.
Warner had trouble scoring for the second game in a row, even though he spent a lot of time in the middle. Ajit Agarkar, who works as an assistant coach for Delhi Capitals, doesn’t care too much, though. “In the last game, he scored fifty. I guess that today was okay. There is no difference in the way he does things. He was one of the best players in the IPL’s history. So you expect him to get it right,” Agarkar said Tuesday after Gujarat Titans lost by 6 wickets.
But that’s just the beginning of the problems Delhi Capitals are having so far in the tournament. Shaw, Marsh, and Rilee Rossouw haven’t lasted long enough to make an impact, and Sarfaraz Khan had trouble finding boundaries during his 34-ball 30 against Titans.
In the first game, Mark Wood’s speed tore apart the top order. In the second game, however, a more precise attack held them together. Shami’s early wides meant that Delhi Capitals didn’t have to worry about their scoring rate for most of their innings, but the batters had a hard time getting out of their ruts. In fact, they had such a hard time that Rashid Khan didn’t have to be brought in until the 13th over.
Agarkar said that the team as a whole needs to improve its batting. “In general, we haven’t batted well,” he said. Some of the other teams have had longer stretches at the top than we have. Both nights, we haven’t been good enough as a group. We have to get better because we play some good teams. A lot of credit goes to Gujarat, but we need to improve as a batting unit as a whole if we want to do better.
“We have the right people to do it. We need to put in more effort and do a better job. We have a lot of faith that we’ll get it right. We haven’t done it yet, that’s for sure.”
There have been a few good things for DC when it comes to hitting, though. Rishabh Pant was replaced by Abhishek Porel in the team. During the middle overs, when Sarfaraz was struggling to speed up the scoring rate, Abhishek Porel hit a couple of clean sixes, which took some of the pressure off.
“It was always going to be hard to replace Rishabh Pant, but you can’t keep going on about that,” he said. “You have to fix it with the people you have. It’s very impressive how Porel has gone about things, especially for someone so young and who hasn’t been at that level before. He has the kind of… We were in a lot of trouble even before he went in. This is great news for us.”
The best batsman for DC in the two games, though, has been Axar Patel. He followed up his quick 16 off 11 balls with a 36 off 22 balls, giving a struggling batting order a much-needed boost. Before the game, DC’s Director of Cricket, Sourav Ganguly, hinted that Axar might bat higher up the order.
“Yeah, batting has been talked about, and since his batting has gotten better, he will bat higher up the order. He batted very well on hard surfaces against Australia, and we hope he can do the same for us.”
Even though the southpaw wasn’t moved up against the Titans, his performance and the lack of performance from the other batters so far could lead to a change in the batting order at some point. And when that happens, DC might have more questions than answers.