Examining Rishabh Pant’s leadership, the Delhi Capitals want to enhance their bowling performance against the Gujarat Titans

When the struggling Delhi Capitals play the unreliable Gujarat Titans in the IPL here on Wednesday, they will be looking to their bowlers to provide a much-improved performance. This will put Rishabh Pant’s leadership qualities to the test.

Pant’s return home was less than ideal, as DC lost 67 runs at home on Saturday against the rampaging Sunrisers Hyderabad, after two straight victories.

After the loss, DC dropped to ninth place with three victories and five losses. They are fully aware that if they want to maintain their chances of making the playoffs, they cannot afford to lose.

Pant made a few poor choices while playing SRH. He began with the toss, misjudging the amount of dew at Arun Jaitley Stadium and choosing to bowl first.

Even more controversial was Pant’s choice to give Lalit Yadav the second over when SRH was cruising along, racking up a record 125 runs without losing in the powerplay.

Personally, Pant was out of sorts, finding it difficult to time his innings as he chased an enormous total and ended up scoring a laborious 44 off 35 balls.

A team needs its openers to score runs from ball one in order to chase a target of 267, but Prithvi Shaw and David Warner haven’t been very effective.

Young Jake Fraser-McGurk kept DC in the chase with a 65 off only 18 balls, but despite his best efforts, Abhishek Porel (42 off 22) could not provide any help.

SRH took the DC bowlers to the dry cleaners, and they had to put their socks back on.

The choice to use short stuff in the first over by inconsistent left-arm seamer Khaleel Ahmed turned out to be a disastrous one. The Kotla’s small boundaries require DC bowlers to pitch it high.

Anrich Nortje, the pace spearhead, has been utterly off-colour this season, and DC will be praying that veteran Ishant Sharma returns after missing the last game because of a back spasm.

So far this season, Kuldeep Yadav has been DC’s top bowler, claiming 10 wickets at an economy rate of 7.60 from five games. However, he didn’t play well against SRH.

He was the DC bowler with the most dot balls (8) but also gave up the most sixes (7) of any bowler.

GT has also been erratic under the new captain, Shubman Gill. However, after four victories and as many defeats, the previous champions have moved up somewhat in the standings after defeating the Punjab Kings by three wickets in their most recent match. They are now ranked sixth.

Their goal would be to maintain their winning streak in order to move up the standings and gain a spot in the play-offs.

Gill would have to take the lead from the front.

When Rahul Tewatia looks to continue his fireworks towards the finish of their innings, players like Sai Sudharsan, David Miller, and Azmatullah Omarzai also need to let their willows do the talking.

Rashid Khan, Noor Ahmad, and the seasoned Mohit Sharma are among the bowlers who will be expected to perform well.