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Mitchell Marsh to be replaced by West Indies star, two big changes expected; Here's DC's likely XI vs RR in IPL 2023
Delhi Capitals are yet to open their account in the 2023 Indian Premier League and will look to end streak when they face Rajasthan Royals.
Delhi Capitals (DC) will take on Rajasthan Royals (RR) in the afternoon game on April 8 at the Barsapara Stadium in Guwahati and will hope to open their account for the season after two underwhelming performances. Warner’s men are at the bottom of the table after disappointing losses in their two opening games; they were handed a 50-run loss at the hands of Lucknow Super Giants in their first match and then to defending champions Gujarat Titans by six wickets.
DC have been sub-par in all three facets of the game so far this season. Against GT the batters struggled and failed to set a competitive target for the bowlers to protect, while the bowlers failed to restrict the LSG batters in the opener.
Only Warner, and Axar Patel have made notable contributions with the bat. MitchelL Marsh, who was in exceptional nick in the recently concluded Border-Gavaskar ODI series and was expected to play a big part for DC this season, has flopped so far with only 4 runs in the first 2 games. Marsh, however, is expected to remain unavailable for DC for the next few games as he is set to fly back home to get married.Aagainst RR, DC may bring in Rovman Powell as his replacement.
The struggles of Prithvi Shaw and Sarfaraz Khan against top-quality pace attacks have been the major talking point in Delhi Capitals' crushing defeats in IPL 2023 so far. Prithvi Shaw has scored 19 runs in his first two innings, while Sarfaraz has managed only 34 runs. Shaw scored only 7 runs against the Gujarat Titans while Sarfaraz scored 30 runs, but took 34 balls to get there.
In both the games, the two young batters, who have been prolific at the domestic level, seemed to have struggled against the likes of Mark Wood (LSG), Mohammed Shami and Alzarri Joseph (GT), all of whom can bowl at 145 plus clicks, and generate movement and bounce.
In both of DC's matches, Shaw was beaten by pace. Against LSG, he was cleaned up by Wood and against GT, Shami hurried him with a short-pitched delivery. Sarfaraz too appeared all at sea against Wood, Alzarri Joseph and Shami.
DC assistant coach, Ajit Agarkar admitted after the GT defeat that the team have not been good enough in the opening two games and stressed the need for collective improvement, and better application from the batters.
Things won’t get any easier for the DC batters as RR have Trent Boult, Yuzvendra Chahal and Ravichandran Ashwin all of whom have troubled DC in the past.
But the bowling unit of DC has looked weak too. All of the bowlers have gone for runs so far with Kyle Mayers and Nicholas Pooran (LSG), and David Miller (GT) all taking the DC bowling attack to the cleaners. The bowlers have had no answer for the onslaught from opposition batters and will need to come up with better plans if they want to pick up points in the upcoming games. Kamlesh Nagarkoti or Chetan Sakaria might be brought in to replace Mukesh Kumar.
Questions have also been raised about the leadership of David Warner after he chose not to bowl Axar at all in the defeat to GT.
DC predicted XI vs RR
Openers: David Warner (c), Prithvi Shaw
Middle-Order: Rovman Powell, Abhishek Porel (wk), Sarfaraz Khan, Rilee Rossouw
All-Rounders: Axar Patel
Bowlers: Kuldeep Yadav, Anrich Nortje, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Khaleel Ahmed.
Impact Player: Aman Khan has been used as the Impact player in the two games and might be used again in the same role.
