The Delhi Daredevils Story: Riding on Virender Sehwag

Nothing going right at the Kotla !

When the IPL Auction took place, most regular cricket followers realised that one of the weakest teams in the tournament has to be Delhi Daredevils. Throughout the first season, Gautam Gambhir was the backbone of Delhi’s batting. In IPL 2, Dilshan and De Villiers rode the team into the last four on the back of consistent batting performances. One can only wonder what their buying stratergy was, since not retaining these three was not a wise call.

The current team depends a lot on skipper Virender Sehwag, intelligent opener David Warner and Morne Morkel who has been fairly consistent of late. Aaron Finch is a very impressive opening batsmen, but was asked to bat at number 6 on occasions. Other Indians include Yogesh Nagar, Venugopal Rao and glovesman Naman Ojha. Neither of the three are consistent or impressive. Unmukt Chand is a very talented youngster, but he probably needs some more experience before he can face the likes of Malinga and co. Frankly, there is hardly any real firepower after Sehwag and Warner. The team managament under Greg Shipperd(along with Eric Simmons) has tried using fellow Aussie Matthew Wade in place of Finch without any success. James Hopes has contributed with both bat and ball, but is currently nursing an injury. Travis Birt has looked decent in whatever little we have seen of him so far, so can’t blame the DD think-tank if they are tempted to give him couple of another chances.

The problem isn’t only the not-so-smart style of bidding at the Auction, but also having got the batting order all wrong. When you have Finch who is experienced top-order batsmen, it makes little sense to send in Naman Ojha or Yogesh Nagar. Rao is a decent middle-order batsmen who can play the ball around and get the occasional big hits, so giving him some more time at number 4 is advisable rather than trying Irfan Pathan. Honestly, even their win against Pune was not a good performance overall. Just the case that DD managed to scrape through on the back of some late hitting by Rao and Finch. In that match too, the order was unbelievable. David Warner started the IPL in decent form but of late has failed to get runs putting more pressure on Sehwag. Being the smart opener that he is, I would give him a longer run though a few people are suggesting dropping Warner to bring back Finch as opener.

When it comes to bowling, DD have yet again made some big blunders. Ex-DD players like Pradeep Sangwan, Yo Mahesh had done a decent job in first three seasons, yet they did not ensure keeping them close. Even if one justifies re-buying Umesh Yadav for his pace and yorkers, there is no way buying Ajit Agarkar can be called sensible. Agarkar conceded runs at over 9 runs/over and picked up just 4 wickets in 7 matches last season for KKR. Even Ashok Dinda, formerly of the same franchise has been bought by spending handsome money when he isn’t ideally a T20 bowler. Dinda does put in a lot of effort and has some zip about him, still he is expensive mostly and NOT a wicket-taker. Spending close to $2 million on injured and out of form Irfan Pathan is one of the biggest mysteries of the Auction. So far, he has bowled well only in two matches out of the 9. DD fans like myself will hope he puts up more performances like the one against KKR. Due to his off and on form, all the responsiblity has fallen upon Morne Morkel and James Hopes. Hopes has been doing an above average job, while Morne has been the only regular wicket-taker but they need some more support from other bowlers and the batsmen.

The biggest dissapointment has been the lack of any quality spinner. Delhi’s FerozeShah Kotla is known to have slow, spin friendly pitches and yet the management has not bought any quality spinner. Yogesh Nagar and Shahbaz Nadeem are too inexperienced, while Roelof Van De Merwe is not a traditional spinner either. De Merwe might be effectively occasionally, but someone like Amit Mishra or Rahul Sharma was required to take advantage of the home conditions. This is the epitome of DD’s indigestible decisions and stupid planning.

As a Delhite, I always felt like supporting the team and kept hoping that Sehwag and Warner would trigger off a comeback into the tournament. Only time they fired together was against Kings XI Punjab when DD managed to amass 225 plus. Sehwag also showed good application and class by smashing a score of 80 on an extremely difficult Kochi pitch. However, expecting him to fire every time is a bit too much. Their one dimensional bowling line-up is not helping their cause since even on tracks with a bit of movement for the pacers, they are getting hit for loads of runs. Fielding too is not up to the mark.

In spite of just one win in 6 matches for DD at their home ground FerozeShah Kotla, the crowds have turned up, game after game. DD has continued to disappoint them and it didn’t surprise me one bit that reasonably share of the people were supporting the KKR or RCB when I went to watch these games.

I have heard many commentators say at times that Sehwag loves challenges. This will be quite a challenge for him to try an inspire the out of sorts team to do something special. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying he will win all the remaining 5 matches for us. Only hoping to see if Delhi fight harder in the matches left and maybe spoil someone else’s chances.