New Delhi, April 30
The horrid home leg for Delhi Capitals (DC) at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in IPL 2025 continued with their 14-run defeat to Kolkata Knight Riders and leg-spin all-rounder Vipraj Nigam admitted the hosts’ could have won the game on Tuesday night if their set batters had continued till the end.
In the chase of 205, DC were kept steady by a 76-run stand between vice-captain Faf du Plessis and captain Axar Patel. But once Sunil Narine took out Axar and Tristan Stubbs in the 14th over, before taking out du Plessis as well, it meant DC suffered another meltdown against spinners- going from 136/3 to ending at 190/9. Before this game, DC had lost 23 wickets to spinners.
Now against KKR, six of nine wickets they lost were taken by spinners, thus exposing a major chink in DC’s batting armour. It also doesn’t help that returns from the likes of Karun Nair and KL Rahul have nosedived.
"Our plan from the beginning was to target their main two spinners. We had also targeted them in the starting two overs (and it worked well). The idea was that if we target two good bowlers, then we will get more overs (from other bowlers) or an extra bowler will come in.”