Delhi Capitals (DC) suffered a seven-wicket loss to Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in an IPL 2024 match played at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on Monday.
DC bowling coach James Hopes was disappointed at having missed an opportunity.
“Tonight was a missed opportunity for us and we won’t be hiding behind any excuses for that,” he said.
DC got off to a good start on a slow wicket as Prithvi Shaw struck three boundaries in the first over of Mitchell Starc before tickling it behind off Vaibhav Arora. Jake Fraser-McGurk struggled to time the ball before giving away his wicket to Starc as well.
Shai Hope was then bowled by Arora as DC ended the Powerplay on 67/3.
Skipper Rishabh Pant and Abhishek Porel stitched a partnership but wickets kept falling. Porel (18), Axar Patel (15), Tristan Stubbs (4) and Kumar Kushagra (1) all got out cheaply as DC looked to go after the bowling.
Pant made of 27 off 20 deliveries and fell prey to Varun Chakravarthy, who ended up taking three wickets including that of Stubbs and Kushagra. Kuldeep Yadav played a useful innings to help Delhi cross the 150-run mark.
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When Hopes was asked about the decision to bat first after winning the toss, he explained that DC wanted to rely on what had been working for them in their recent wins.
“I think the thought process behind it was, having some success in putting up a big score on the board and then try and defend it. I think we knew there wasn’t going to be much dew and there wasn’t. There was barely any dew at the end. We knew batting first that we needed a score with a 2 in front of it. And maybe after our powerplay, which we still thought 200 was definitely possible after being 3/68 (67) at the end of the powerplay. We might have aimed a bit too high and didn’t understand quickly enough. Yes, it was sticking for the spinners and we have two pretty good spinners ourselves. Maybe targeting the 180-210 score was more realistic and more defendable. We lost a few wickets going a bit too hard,” Hopes said.
“I am not in the batter’s meeting but the plan going into this game was that this has been a high-scoring venue. Even though we lost three wickets in the powerplay, we had no reason to think we would not get anything other than that. We were scoring at 11.5 an over. We were still thinking 200-220. Our fault was that we didn’t readjust or recalibrate our sight on something slightly lower.
“I think everyone assumed the last 48 hours coming into this game that it is going to another 200-240 game. I don’t think the trick is understanding that it’s not that sometimes and you have to actually put a defendable score on board and not go too hard and get some of that 150. In the end, we did pretty well get to get to 150 with Kuldeep Yadav batting the way he did.,” he added.
Phil Salt was dropped by Lizaad Williams off the first ball of the second over and the Englishman rubbed salt in DC’s would as he hammered a 33-ball 68.
KKR went on to win the game comfortably by seven wickets.
Hopes lamented DC’s fielding wasn’t up to the mark and hampered their chances
more.
“I just saw Phil Salt whack the ball everywhere. We dropped him at deep mid-wicket in Vizag and we dropped him in the second over. When you give players a second opportunity to score runs they are going to take it. Our fielding today wasn’t up to scratch. We had dropped important catches in the tournament, that’s no one’s fault and that can just happen,” Hopes said.
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