Axar Patel will be keen to lead from the front.
| Photo Credit: File photo: SHIV KUMAR PUSHPAKAR
Inevitably at the dawn of every Indian Premier League (IPL) season, Delhi Capitals is faced with a familiar, vexing question. Can this be the year when the franchise finally breaks the hoodoo and goes for glory in the summer T20 extravaganza?
Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Punjab Kings, to a lesser extent, are the other two franchises at the receiving end of this recurring query.
DC, runner-up in 2020, hasn’t had a glance at the title since reaching the playoffs in 2021, finishing fifth, ninth and sixth in the standings in 2022, 2023 and 2024 respectively.
But therein lies the charm of the IPL: in any given season, teams are matched evenly enough for anyone to conjure up a genuine crack at the title.
Intrigue
Particularly after the latest mega auction, there is a fresh layer of intrigue about how another major shake-up in the playing roster of the ten franchises will play out.
For Delhi, which named Axar Patel as the captain for the 2025 season, the most high-profile acquisitions in the auction were K.L. Rahul, Mitchell Starc and Faf du Plessis.
With Axar, Tristan Stubbs and Kuldeep Yadav being among its retained players, these six will have to be at the heart of the turnaround that the franchise is hoping to stage.
With England’s Harry Brook pulling out of the campaign to focus on his hectic international calendar after the IPL, the choice of the four overseas players to slot into the starting eleven seems to be straightforward.
Deadly combination
Jake Fraser-McGurk and du Plessis are at opposite ends of the spectrum in their careers, but they could make for a deadly opening combination.
Stubbs will hope to repay the trust of the franchise by continuing to blaze away in the middle-order. Starc will bear the responsibility of the pace spearhead.
Marked change
A marked change from previous seasons for Delhi may be the range and quality of Indian players at its disposal.
In Karun Nair, Abishek Porel, Sameer Rizvi and Ashutosh Sharma, there’s plenty of domestic batting depth to help take the pressure off Rahul.
In the pace bowling department, Mukesh Kumar, T. Natarajan and Mohit Sharma provide plenty of cushion.
Published – March 16, 2025 12:09 am IST
Content Source: www.thehindu.com