Delhi Capitals' (DC) nightmarish campaign continues in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 as they suffered their fifth straight defeat at the M Chinnaswamy stadium on Saturday (April 15). Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) piled misery on David Warner-led DC and flattened them by 23 runs in match no.20 of the cash-rich league. Continuing their lacklustre performance this year, DC are reeling at bottom of the IPL 2023's points table.
DC are without their regular skipper Rishabh Pant, but they still have the high profile players in David Warner, Mitchell Marsh, Prithvi Shaw, Anrich Nortje and Axar Patel among others, who can turn the match on their head on their given day.
Not just this, they also have the luxury of the two legendary cricketers Sourav Ganguly, Ricky Ponting who are part of DC's coaching staff. Meanwhile, former India head coach Ravi Shastri, who is part of IPL's elite commentary panel, made a blunt remark on DC's director of crikcet Ganguly during the match.
“Problem now with Delhi Capitals is, especially with the way the other teams are going, you lose four on the trot, it becomes very, very difficult to come back,” Shastri said on-air when RCB were inching towards a convincing victory over DC.
“There are people in that dugout that are not used to losing. Ricky Ponting's one,” Simon Doull, Shastri's fellow commentator, mentioned.
“David Warner too. He's been on the winning side as well,” Shastri pointed out, Shastri, before taking a colossal dig at the former captain's stint with the board. Shastri was India's head coach for a major part of Ganguly's tenure as BCCI President. “It's not about losing. It's about being hammered. It's five on the trot, with you not looking like winning. Losing close games is one thing, when you're being outplayed by opposition, it's not a happy story.”
“Sourav Ganguly, the former president of the board. He must have thought it's nice upstairs!” Shastri said which left everyone in splits.
Talking about the match, Warner won the toss and opted to field first while Virat Kohli yet again brought his A game to the fore as he did the bulk of scoring during fielding restrictions. He belted 50 runs from 34 balls which was decorated with six fours and a maximum to help RCB post a challenging total of 174/6. During the innings, Kohli also became the first batter to score 2,500 runs at a single venue, M.Chinnaswamy Stadium. He surpassed Mumbai Indians (MI) skipper Rohit Sharma to score most runs (999) against DC in T20s. Also, with three catches he surpassed Rohit's tally of catches in the IPL. Kohli is third on the list of most catches by a fielder in the IPL. Only former Chennai Super Kings (CSK) batter Suresh Raina and former MI all-rounder Kieron Pollard (103) have more catches.
However, in reply DC were reduced to 151/9 despite Manish Pandey's gritty half century.
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