What are the issues with Delhi Capitals?

In a similar position to RCB after 5 matches...

Yesterday, we had a look at the challenges facing Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) and the factors which have caused them. It was my most popular thread ever on X/Twitter so far with almost half a million impressions just from the opening tweet of the thread, and more replies than I can ever reply to.

So, high standards set from that as we move onto Delhi Capitals as requested by numerous other people on Twitter. DC stand at 1-4 from 5 matches, an identical win-loss record to RCB, but are bottom of the table currently with a woeful net run rate of -1.37.

Post mega-auction has been a tough time for DC generally. In the group stages in the three years prior to that 2022 mega auction, DC came 3rd, 2nd and 1st from 2019-2021, but since then they’ve come 5th in 2022, 9th last season and stand bottom of the table in 2024.

Current coach Ricky Ponting was appointed in January 2018, so has been in position for just over six years. Initially, the appointment looked very successful, turning DC into regular qualifications prior to the 2022 mega auction, with the Australian, known for his astute commentary, looking capable of transferring his knowledge to coaching.

However, since the mega auction, things have taken a turn for the worse. Let’s take a look at my reasons why DC find themselves in this position.

2022 Mega Auction - Retentions and Releases

In franchise cricket, the success or failure of most teams can be traced back to recruitment. It’s probably fair to say that recruitment will be a recurring theme of this post.

Ahead of the 2022 mega auction, DC retained Rishabh Pant, Axar Patel, Prithvi Shaw and Anrich Nortje. Nothing to see here. These were entirely reasonable retentions which could not be questioned at all.

However, the nucleus of that successful 2019-2021 team did have to go back into the auction pool, including Shreyas Iyer, R Ashwin, Avesh Khan, Kagiso Rabada, Shikhar Dhawan and Shimron Hetmyer.

2022 Mega Auction - Recruitment

Replacing those players were the likes of David Warner, Mitchell Marsh, Shardul Thakur, Kuldeep Yadav, Rovman Powell and Mustafizur. Back-up came via the likes of Lungi Ngidi, Sarfaraz Khan, KS Bharat, Khaleel Ahmed, Chetan Sakariya and Lalit Yadav.

Warner was a like for like with Dhawan (albeit overseas) while DC deserve credit for picking up Kuldeep Yadav while his stocks were low. Thakur, Powell and Mustafizur are no longer at the franchise, and neither are Sarfaraz, Bharat or Sakariya.

These departures midway through an auction cycle hint at quite a changeable core group, something which you would never see at Chennai Super Kings, for example. Their success is built on the foundation of stability and avoiding making knee-jerk changes.

When at the 2022 mega auction, something I noticed about DC was the sheer number of times they bid on different players. Bidding on 49 players in total was the second-most of the ten teams, 6 players more than what we bid on at PBKS when we had retained two players fewer as well.

Not only this, but their bought percentage of players bid on at the mega auction was the lowest of all teams (40.82%). So, once they had identified a player to bid on, they didn’t necessarily follow through with a number of further bids. There appeared to be a lot of times when they bid once or twice for a player and then moved on, which seems a relatively strange strategy.

Team strength drop-off

Let’s compare DC in their qualifier in 2021, to the first match of 2024.

In 2024, how many of these positions have been upgraded compared to 2021? I don’t really think you can make a case for many at all, when you take into account overseas versus domestic considerations.

People will argue that Nortje was unavailable, while Jhye Richardson wasn’t fully fit and Ngidi was also injured, plus there were circumstances around Brook’s withdrawal that was unforeseen. However, Nortje was retained despite having a long-term injury, while Richardson has been pretty injury-prone throughout his career.

Replacement players

Another issue was the replacement players. Injuries happen in sport, and a team is extremely lucky if they don’t have several injuries to key players during a tournament.

Ngidi was replaced by Jack Fraser-McGurk (a batter), leaving the bowling looking even thinner on the ground. Remember yesterday in the RCB thread, I mentioned about the scarcity of resources in the domestic pacer market - yet DC chose to replace Ngidi with a batter knowing that they had availability issues with their other overseas pacers.

It then took them around three weeks to replace Brook, eventually doing so with Lizaad Williams. Taking so long to do so should be robustly questioned, and I’m also unconvinced about how Williams’ SA20 performances will translate to the IPL.

All told, this hints at confused recruitment which pays little attention to gap analysis. This left them with a pace attack of Ishant Sharma, Khaleel Ahmed, Sumit Kumar and Mitch Marsh. If you have 100 Cr to build a cricket team, that shouldn’t be your pace bowling group for match one of a season.

Further, it’s quite the departure from 2021, when in that qualifier they had Rabada, Nortje and Avesh, with some back up from Stoinis from the batting group.

Unspent budget

DC started the 2024 auction with 28.95 Cr, and ended it having failed to spend 9.9 Cr (the most remaining of all other teams). The other nine teams left an average of 2.5 Cr unspent.

For those who don’t know the exchange rate, 9.9 Cr is around £1m. The IPL is a multi-billion industry, with the sale price of the expansion teams being 7,000 Cr and 5,200 Cr. Established teams should be worth more. So, saving 9.9 Cr in player purchases is a false economy for a business worth significantly more.

Such an approach is akin to choosing not to give yourself the best chance in a level-budget league.

Strange batting selections and in-play decisions

In his three IPL matches so far this season, Prithvi Shaw has scored 66(40), 43 (27) and 10(7). The problem is, he wasn’t selected for the first two matches, with DC picking Warner and Marsh as the opening duo and the more unheralded Ricky Bhui at number three.

Warner/Shaw as openers and Marsh at three (if Marsh has to play - more on this later) makes much more sense.

Further, they seem unable to settle on Rishabh Pant’s ideal entry point. Pant’s return to IPL action this season is a real highlight of the season However, his entry point in match three was number 3, coming in after 9.3 overs, but in the mammoth chase against MI several days ago, he batted at number 5, coming in after 15 overs.

I’m struggling to understand the decision to bat Abhishek Porel at number three chasing 235 when the openers put on just 22 runs in 22 balls at the fall of the first wicket. Already DC needed 213 in 98 balls (required strike rate of 217) so the only logical decision focuses on giving your best batters the most number of balls - to put it simply, Pant and Tristan Stubbs needed to face the majority of the chase.

Mitch Marsh, Shai Hope and Phil Salt

Mitch Marsh made his IPL debut around 15 years ago. He’s now played 42 matches. Looking at extremely basic numbers, he averages 19.55 at a strike rate of 127.63 in his IPL career with the bat. With the ball, he’s done ok - but he’s not a regular four-over bowler, bowling an average of 13.33 balls per match.

Does a player with this output warrant a 6 Cr price tag? It’s certainly very debatable. Does this warrant 21 matches in a DC shirt in the two full seasons since the mega auction and the part of this season so far? Last season he averaged 16 at a strike rate of 132. When you look at similar players (pace all-rounders) at other teams such as Andre Russell, Hardik Pandya, Marcus Stoinis or Sam Curran, there doesn’t look to be much comparison.

Marsh has been opening in 2024 when DC already had a strong opener in Phil Salt. Salt cost the franchise just 2 Cr but was strangely released after a decent season for the franchise, and has now moved to KKR. Replacing him was Shai Hope, who has something of an anchor dynamic - I’d be surprised if Hope could take the game away from teams with a high strike rate innings at this level. Again, this hints at recruitment issues where DC haven’t been able to replace players with those of similar quality.

Kumar Kushagra

This is the third year of the auction cycle. While the 2025 mega auction wasn’t confirmed until after the 2024 mini auction, this must have been at the forefront of the teams minds. It was always pretty likely to happen.

One year before a mega auction, teams need to have a ‘win now’ mentality. If you can only retain four players, and those players are pretty much already established in advance, there’s not much point in investing in young players because you won’t be able to retain them.

Instead of which, DC paid 7.8 Cr for rookie 19 year old Kumar Kushagra, yet another keeper/batter (they already have plenty in their roster). His numbers in longer formats show promise, but don’t hit at absurd hitting ability. There wasn’t much impact for Jharkhand in the recent Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy - in fact players like Anukul Roy and Virat Singh in the same team performed considerably better. On a side note, Virat Singh is still a batter I think could be a decent base price squad option for an IPL team.

If you pay that much for a 19 year old, you have to be pretty sure that they are going to be very good and worth investing in for the long-term. This, unfortunately, falls down on several points. One, it’s tough to invest in long-term prospects one year before a mega auction, and two, when Kushagra finally made his IPL debut in DC’s fifth match as an impact sub, he batted at number eight behind Axar Patel and Lalit Yadav. If you think a 19 year old batter is going to be a superstar, you don’t bat him behind those two players. Again it hints at a disconnect between recruitment and selection.

Phase issues for pacers

I don’t think many people think that DC have a strong pace bowling attack. So far in the tournament, their pace bowlers have gone for 11.31 runs per over, in excess of greater than one run per over more than any other team. They average 38 with the ball, so it’s not like they’re making up for this with wicket-taking either. Their pacers have conceded 45 sixes, more than double that of six other teams, and triple the number of sixes conceded so far by Rajasthan Royals.

They can’t do much about their roster now and it would be unfair to anticipate that Lizaad Williams will be able to improve this to a major extent. DC have also conceded 14.96 runs per over in the last five overs this season, almost three runs per over worse than the next-worse team in the death over phase.

Anrich Nortje has cost 131 runs in seven death overs so far, while Khaleel Ahmed has gone for 69 in six overs. Ishant Sharma, Mukesh Kumar and Mitch Marsh have also been treated with disdain by opposition batters in the last five overs.

If we look at these five players as a collective in the IPL in the last two seasons, their death economy is 10.81 and they take wickets every 24 balls in the Powerplay. So, they’re neither incisive at the start of opposition innings, nor able to close out innings either in the death overs.

DC’s bowling issues were basically a self-fulfilling prophecy. It would have been unreasonable to expect differently. It’s all very well for fans to look at the bowlers and blaming them, but they’re often being used in situations which they’re not necessarily suited to.

For example, I look at Nortje as a 2/1/1, 1/2/1, or a 2/2/0 phase bowler (PP/middle/death) and yet he’s bowled six overs in the last four overs in four matches so far this season. He’s been tasked with bowling more at the death as opposed to aligning his phase usage with his super strengths. It’s not his fault.

Moving forward - next year’s mega auction and getting something out of 2024

There’s a decent core to retain four players, assuming the mega auction retention rules are the same as in 2022.

DC will obviously retain captain and icon Rishabh Pant in their list, and will be tempted also to keep hold of the spin duo Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav. This leaves one more spot, which Tristan Stubbs looks well primed for after his big breakthrough this year.

This completely covers wicket-keeping and spin, so priority auction recruitment should focus on elite overseas pacers, and strong batting options.

If DC are soon eliminated from this year’s tournament, they may as well try the likes of Kushagra, plus Yash Dhull, Jake Fraser-McGurk and Abhishek Porel in order to form an opinion focused on buying them back in the auction.

Except for these players, they probably do need to clear the decks and go back to square one - fortunately for them, the upcoming mega auction allows them to do that.

It would be a superb project to be a part of.

Anyone interested in discussing how I can help their team with strategic consultation and data-driven analysis, or contribute to any media work, can get in touch at sportsanalyticsadvantage@gmail.com.