The journey till the playoff was great but where did the mistake happen in the last two matches from Delhi

IPL 2021 Delhi Capitals: In the second qualifier of the Indian Premier League, Delhi Capitals lost to KKR by 3 wickets. Earlier, Delhi was defeated by Chennai in the first qualifier. With this, Delhi’s dream of winning the first title in the IPL was shattered. Now the question is, how did the Delhi team, which started in a smoky manner in IPL 2021, finally staggered at its last stop. How Rishabh Pant, who led the team throughout the tournament, missed the last two matches. Let’s know.

Delhi’s journey to playoff

Delhi beat Chennai by 7 wickets in their first match in the 14th season of the IPL, signaling to other teams not to underestimate them. Delhi team topped the points table by winning 10 out of 14 matches and losing 4 matches. Rishabh Pant has got the command of the team due to the injury of Shreyas Iyer. Aggressive bowling such as Avesh Khan, Enrique Nokia and Kagiso Rabada and strong batsmen like Prithvi Shaw, Shikhar Dhawan and Stoinis made the team to the playoffs. Pant not only set a good example of his captaincy in the IPL, but people started seeing him as the captain of the Indian team and veterans also praised his captaincy. The Delhi team played almost all the matches of the league fearlessly and was one of the major contenders for the IPL 2021 title.

Under the captaincy of Rishabh Pant, Delhi Capitals took on Chennai Super Kings in the first qualifier of IPL 2021. Pant was leading the Delhi team in the qualifiers for the first time. In this match, Delhi Capitals lost against Chennai Super Kings in a thrilling match. Batting first, Delhi scored 172 runs for the loss of 5 wickets. Chennai won by 4 wickets after achieving the target of victory in 19.4 overs for the loss of 6 wickets. In this match, Pant made a mistake in batting first. He wasted four balls during his innings.

On the last ball of the first 19 overs, he refused to take a run so that he could get strike in his next over. Pant took a shot on the first three balls of the 20th over but did not take a run while Tom Curran at the other end could also hit big shots at the other end. If even three runs had been scored in these four balls, then perhaps the result of the match could have been different. After this, Pant called Tom in the 20th over to bowl even with one over remaining from the death over bowler Kagiso Rabada. This was a more shocking decision because even after having such an experienced bowler, it was beyond comprehension to hand the ball to a less experienced player.

What went wrong in the second qualifier?

Now let’s talk about the second qualifier. Where Delhi’s batsmen made a great start against KKR in the second qualifier. But the middle order batsmen disappointed a lot. Barring Dhawan and Iyer, none of the batsmen could score more than 20 runs. The Delhi Capitals bowlers were initially unable to take wickets. The bowlers came back in the last over but by then it was too late. The surprising thing is that Delhi bowlers have taken 2 wickets more than 10 times during the powerplay of all IPL matches. The journey of Delhi under the captaincy of Rishabh was spectacular. The team was out of the league yesterday. Rishabh Pant could not handle the pressure of the big match. There was a lack of experience in these two matches. This was the reason that the team could not reach the final.

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Qualifier 2: Venkatesh Iyer’s performance after a strong performance by the bowlers, Kolkata Knight Riders reached the final by defeating Delhi