Lucknow: Delhi Capitals will expect a more productive effort from their openers when they visit the ‘City of Nawabs’ to face an increasingly confident Lucknow Super Giants in an IPL match here on Tuesday.
The Capitals’ opening has been a bit of roulette so far this season with Faf du Plessis, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Abhishek Porel and the latest entrant Karun Nair coming in at the pole position.
In fact, in the last five matches they had three different opening combinations between those four batters, producing partnerships of 23, 34 0, 9, 0.
It also had to do with the injury of Du Plessis, and the South African’s fitness will be closely watched ahead of this match.
Thus far, it looked like a minor glitch because the Capitals have won five of their seven matches and the middle-order under the aegis of KL Rahul too worked like a well-oiled machine.
But Lucknow’s competent bowling unit of Digvesh Rathi, Ravi Bishnoi, Avesh Khan and Shardul Thakur has choked the opposition without much fanfare.
The way Avesh excelled in the 18th and 20th over against Rajasthan Royals in LSG’s two-run win is an example of that.
It might have also doubled the confidence of the LSthat they can pull off wins from any situation.
In contrast, LSG has a solid top three with Mitchell Marsh, Nicholas Pooran and Aiden Markram firing more often than not and it has given them an edge over opponents in the powerplay phase.