Dismal Performances by Delhi and Punjab Raise Doubts over the Teams’ Nucleus

by SHUVAIT KOUL

Sleepless nights for Delhi Daredevils till they take guard for their next encounter. It was a rather forgetful day for the hosts as they started their crusade in IPL4 on a dismal note.

Though the DareDevils may earn themselves some points by justifying it as a bad day in the office but their outing against the Mumbai Indians has exposed many chinks in their armor.

They might already be feeling the heat because of the lack of icon players in their side. With the likes of Dilshan, Gambhir, Vettori and De Villiers drafted to other franchisees, all that Delhi is left is an explosive opening pair of skipper Sehwag and David Warner but a brittle middle order. This became evident with Malinga ripping apart their defenses and eventually bundling them out for a paltry total 95.

But DD can draw some solace from the fact that they have a reasonably good pace attack in Morne Morkel, Dinda and Umesh Yadav who on their day can be really probing and hard to get away.

Needless to emphasize that they will have their moments in the IPL but this Daredevils side is by no means is as dangerous as that of the previous seasons and to really pass shivers down the spine of the opposition, they will have to do a lot of home work and get their act together.

In what looked like a duplication of the Delhi performance, KXIP took a leaf out of the Daredevils book much to the dismay of the owner Preity Zinta who has not had not had the rub of the green going her away in any of the seasons.

Apart from some fire works by Ryan Mclaren in the latter half of Punjab innings, it was a disastrous show by them against the first timers Pune Warriors after coming out into the middle under a new skipper Adam Gilchrist. After tottering at nine for four at one stage, they did well to reach a respectable total of 112 in the end but dropping a couple of dollies did not help their cause at all.

Like the Daredevils, the Kings also suffer from the same deficiency of star players and will have to pull their socks up to fancy chances of making it big on the bigger stage. Gilly’s leadership will be put to test and will have to lead by example to pump up the dressing room.

The super Sunday turned out to be a one sided affair and has raised many questions on the nucleus of Delhi and Punjab teams which in the course of the tournament will surely trouble them if they don’t play like cohesive units.