Disaster! Annihilation! Surrender! That’s the only way to describe how the Delhi Daredevils performed in their last game against the Royal Challengers Bangalore.
The Daredevils were nowhere in the game, destroyed as they were by the RCB’s pace attack comprising of the super fast duo, Mitchell Starc and Varun Aaron. When they lost by 10 wickets, it was only to be expected, as the weakness of the Daredevil batsmen against pace and bounce is well known.
In particular, the Delhi Daredevils would be regretting paying $4 million for the services of Yuvraj Singh, perhaps the most overrated player in the history of the IPL. Every match Yuvraj plays, as his inability to play genuine fast bowling gets exposed, the $4 million spent on him begins to look more and more like the blunder of the century.
Yuvraj has done absolutely nothing at all in this IPL, which is such a shame because a great player like him does not deserve to be humiliated on such a constant basis. It can only be hoped that his recent failures don’t cause people to forget what a great player he used to be – after all, he won the 2011 World Cup for India.
Delhi Daredevils has quality overseas players such as J.P. Duminy, Angelo Mathews. However, apart from South African leg spinner Imran Tahir, none of their bowlers, whether it is Nathan Coulter-Nile, Amit Mishra or Domnic Muthuswami have done well at all.
In fact, after Tahir, Duminy, who is just a part-timer, has been their best bowler. Zaheer Khan, the former Indian Test cricketer, has been injured, else, he would have led the Daredevils attack.
Kings XI are no great shakes themselves and at the time of writing, are the worst team in the IPL if you consider the IPL tables. It would require a miracle for them to get anywhere close to the playoffs, and it does seem that coach Sanjay Bangar and captain George Bailey have almost given up in their team.
Glen Maxwell has completely failed and his mind seems to be elsewhere, following his great performance in the World Cup victory. He was actually dropped in the last match, which nobody could have expected. David Miller is another huge disappointment.
The pace bowlers, led by Aussie fast bowler Mitchell Johnson, have done reasonably well with young medium pacer Sandeep picking wickets. But Axar Patel has done nothing so far.
Clearly, this is a match between two sides struggling for a bit of form. The side that makes the least mistakes should win the match.
The Teams:
Delhi Daredevils: JP Duminy (captain), Quinton de Kock, Mayank Agarwal, Manoj Tiwary, Yuvraj Singh, Saurabh Tiwary, Angelo Mathews, Kedar Jadhav, Imran Tahir, Amit Mishra, Shahbaz Nadeem, Zaheer Khan, Jaydev Unadkat, Mohammed Shami, C.M. Gautam, Gurinder Sandhu, Jayant Yadav, Albie Morkel, Srikar Bharat, Marcus Stoinis, Dominic Joseph Muthuswamy, Shreyas Iyer, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Karapak Jiyas, Travis Head.
Kings XI Punjab: George Bailey (captain), Virender Sehwag, Murali Vijay, Wriddhiman Saha, Shaun Marsh, David Miller, Glenn Maxwell, Rishi Dhawan, Manan Vohra, Gurkeerat Singh Mann, Thisara Perera, Mitchell Johnson, Anureet Singh, Karanveer Singh, Sandeep Sharma, Shivam Sharma, Parvinder Awana, Akshar Patel, Yogesh Gowalkar, Beuran Hendricks, Shardul Thakur.
Watch Kings XI Punjab take on Delhi Daredevils at 4:00 PM, Friday, live on Sony Six!
