DC's Jekyll & Hyde display shows how ordinary they have been but how good they can be

Thursday, April 20, 2023, Delhi: Axar Patel and Lalit Yadav are at the crease and are trying their best to stop the Delhi Capitals (DC) from making heavy weather of a routine chase. To add to all the drama, the game began an hour late because of rain, and at one stage, many on social media had joked that an abandoned contest was the only way DC could notch up a point on the board.

For about two and a half hours, the hosts were irresistible. They bundled the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) out for 127. David Warner then arrived, owned the powerplay like only he could, and even made DC dream of significantly improving their net run rate (NRR), rather than just scripting their maiden win of the season.

That the run-chase came down to the final over, with Axar perhaps struggling with a groin injury and Lalit looking extremely nervy, only highlights why DC are rock-bottom in the standings. One difference from previous games, though, is that they now seem to have something to cling to.

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DC scraped past KKR to register their first win of the season

As has been the norm, they won the toss and chose to bowl first. With inclement weather a possibility, that seemed like the right call too. It felt an even more inspiring decision when Ishant Sharma, returning to the IPL after 717 days, got the ball to wobble around.

He ended up picking up two wickets, which included those of KKR captain Nitish Rana and Sunil Narine while conceding only 19 runs. If any Delhi fan was hoping for a throwback to the good old days of the first couple of IPL seasons, this was it.

Ishant was not a part of their setup back then, although he was one of the few Indian pace bowlers consistently making a mark. Funnily enough, he was donning the KKR purple back then. So, this is, at the cost of sounding poetic, Ishant showing thousands of fans that he still has something left in the tank.

Mukesh Kumar, another Indian seamer, has not enjoyed a great campaign so far. A force in red-ball cricket, those performances have not translated into the IPL. That is no surprise, considering this arena is unforgiving for even the best in the business.

Against KKR, which could probably be called his home team, for he plays for Bengal in domestic cricket, he looked the part. He, like Ishant, got the ball to move around and hassled Litton Das for pace. Mukesh was dumped for three consecutive sixes by Andre Russell later in the innings but he was not the first bowler to meet that fate, nor will he be the last.

This game also saw DC’s spinners do exceedingly well. Axar Patel dismissed Mandeep Singh and Rinku Singh despite the latter being a southpaw and the kind of batter David Warner is usually reluctant to throw Axar into the deep end.

At one stage, Kuldeep Yadav was on a hat trick. Had he not dragged down his hat-trick ball to Umesh Yadav, could well have had a hat trick to show for his toil. Either way, DC’s spin twins managed four wickets between them, and that, especially on tracks that will only slow down, is also a good sign moving forward.

A summation of DC’s bowling display will, of course, not be complete without talking about Anrich Nortje. He has bowled with fire throughout the season but wickets have been hard to come by. The South African picked up two on Thursday and provided a glimpse of the destruction he is capable of causing.

Now, coming to DC's batting.

If you just look at the scorecard, you probably think this was a below-par batting unit that huffed and puffed to even score at 6.5 runs per over. While that assessment might not entirely be wrong, it must also be noted that the innings contained a breezy Warner contribution – the sort of knocks that have made him the all-time IPL great he is.

In fact, Thursday was perhaps the first time he looked in any kind of rhythm. Whenever the ball was pitched short, it was whacked over mid-wicket. Width outside off stump was punished and Narine, quite often KKR’s bowling lynchpin, was taken down in the powerplay.

This is what people thought Warner would bring to the fore this season, having done something similar for years at the SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH). The runs, in the early phase of DC’s campaign, did not dry up, and now, it seems that he might have just hit his straps to dominate from the outset. When that happens, Warner becomes a massive problem for opposition teams.

All that said, not even DC’s staunchest supporter would say that everything is rosy. Had that been the case, they would not be rooted to the foot of the table. Against KKR, too, it seemed, at times, that they had forgotten how to win.

After scoring 61-1 in the powerplay, DC almost stuttered and stumbled their way to their sixth successive defeat this season. Apart from Warner, none of the other batters looked in any sort of touch. Mitchell Marsh and Phil Salt, expected to inject impetus, were unimpressive, as was Prithvi Shaw, whose run of low scores is showing no signs of abating.

On paper, these batters can be irresistible, much like the entire Delhi Capitals team. Cricket, though, is not played on paper. And that is the discrepancy they have to rectify moving forward. Time, because of what happened earlier in their campaign, is not a luxury anymore.

While the fixture against KKR showed how good DC can be (in patches at least), it also portrayed how far off they are right now. Of course, things can change in a trice in the IPL.

But only if DC stop these Jekyll and Hyde displays. If that continues, these victories will just be glorious aberrations and will not be befitting of a team that has so much talent.