As of now, Kevin Pietersen, the team’s mentor, thinks that Delhi Capitals are yet to find their perfect match in all this. He said how important was toss in the team’s six-wicket defeat at the Arun Jaitley Stadium against Royal Challengers Bengaluru. After this loss, which was their second from three games, Delhi landed on fourth place. Because they lost the toss, Delhi was always going to do the hard work of scoring a huge sum at home.
KL Rahul made a steady 41 runs off 39 balls and Tristan Stubbs smashed a quickfire 34 off 18, setting up 162/8 for Delhi. However, that wasn’t enough against the mighty Royal Challengers. After the match, Pietersen emphasized the importance of glory at the toss. In fact, the toss was won by Rajat Patidar, the captain of RCB, for whom he chose to bowl: Delhi would have done the same in anticipation of dew later on, after such a dry day in the afternoon.
Pietersen said, Winning the toss was important. There was dew, making it easy for batting later on. It was tougher for us during the dry innings on the wicket. He also referenced prior games where teams batting first have come up victorious before this, marking this as the first time where a chasing team succeeded.
Despite their opening season with four straight wins, some very narrow games intervened, the closest perhaps being with the Rajasthan Royals when they made a truly remarkable comeback under pressure, winning in the super over, thanks to the brilliant final bowl from Mitchell Starc. Delhi managed to scrape through in their first match by a solitary wicket against Lucknow Super Giants, thanks to Ashutosh Sharma’s efforts.
Looking up at the fair performance overall, Pietersen thinks they have not found their most excellent game as yet, saying, “We haven’t hit our straps in all departments, but that’s all right. My perfect match is coming, I believe. We can only play 11 players.”
