Under the leadership of Rishabh Pant, Delhi Capitals (DC) took on Shreyas Iyer-led Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in match 47 of the Indian Premier League 2024 (IPL 2024) on Monday, April 29 at Eden Gardens. in Calcutta.

Delhi Capitals won the toss and surprisingly decided to try bat first in the match. The decision backfired as the batsmen struggled at Eden Gardens. Only two players, Kuldeep Yadav (35) and Rishabh Pant (27), crossed the 20-run mark in the innings and DC posted a disappointing score of 153/9.

Defending the total, the Delhi bowlers were on the receiving end of an assault by Phil Salt as the opener scored a brisk 68 runs. In the end, Shreyas Iyer (33) and Venkatesh Iyer (26) joined forces to lead KKR to a 7-wicket victory with 21 balls remaining to further strengthen their position in the IPL 2024 points table.

Speaking after the match, Rishabh Pant launched an attack on his batsmen for the loss. He also defended DC’s strange decision to bat first despite the greater run chase in the previous match at the venue and knowing that batting becomes easier in the second innings. Rishabh Pant said:

“It was a good option to bat first. As a batting unit, we didn’t bat well, 150 was below where things were going.”

Rishabh Pant added that they will learn from their mistakes and continue to focus on the upcoming matches. Rishabh Pant said:

“But we learn from our mistakes, every day is not your day. The way we were going as a team was good (winning 4 of their last 5 games), but these games come in T20.”

Rishabh Pant signed off by attacking his batsmen again, saying that a total of over 180 could have given the bowlers a chance to fight back. Rishabh Pant said:

“I think anything around 180-210 would have been a good score, we didn’t give our bowlers enough runs to defend.”

Previous match of DC vs KKR in IPL 2024

On April 3, Delhi Capitals and Kolkata Knight Riders faced each other at the Dr. YS Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium in Visakhapatnam and the Knight Riders won that match by 106 runs.

It was a run-fest in Visakhapatnam as Kolkata Knight Riders posted the third-highest total in IPL history (272/7), riding on sensational half-centuries from Sunil Narine (85) and Angkrish Raghuvanshi (54). Andre Russell (41) and Rinku Singh (26) also made decent contributions. For DC, Anrich Nortje (3), Ishant Sharma, Mitchell Marsh (1) and Khaleel Ahmed (1) were among the wickets.

In response, Delhi Capitals got off to a horrible start as they faced a batting collapse and were reduced to 4-33. Rishabh Pant (55) and Tristan Stubbs (54) scored fifties but DC could only manage 166 as they were bowled out in 17.2 overs to lose the match by a huge margin of 106 runs.