When I saw the squad of Delhi Capitals ahead of their game against Royal Challengers Bangalore, it looked power packed batting with Prithvi Shaw and David Warner opening the innings followed by Mitchell Marsh, Rishab Pant, Lalit Yadav, Romvell Powell, Axar Patel and Shardul Thakur. Their bowling too looked good in Mustafizur Rahman, Shardul Thakur, Khaleel Ahmed, Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav.
They had won an important toss and put the opposition in early trouble with half the squad back in the hut by the 11th over with the last recognized pair in Dinesh Kartik and Shahbaz Ahmed that is where things went wrong for Delhi Capitals. Pant dropped the important catch of Dinesh Kartik and it cost them heavily with Bangalore scoring 100 off the last nine overs which was a par score on the Wankhede wicket.
Extra risks
Delhi started the reply with Warner and Shaw and looked on track to achieve the target. But after the fall of Shaw, Marsh struggled and could not get going. In trying to hit the ball hard, he was not able to get the timing right and the innings got stuck. This was the time for Ricky Ponting the head coach to call back the struggling Marsh retired hurt as it was putting pressure on Warner who had to take extra risks to keep the run rate. Marsh batted 25 percent of the overs and scored just 14 runs in his 24 balls. And when he fell the required run rate jumped to 14 per over with just six overs to go and all the batting fire power still in the dugout.
Marsh was one of the stars of Australia’s T20 World Cup win but was playing his first game and was coming back from an injury. Any player would struggle to get going immediately and this was the time for the experienced Ponting to take a decisive decision and call Marsh back which would have done the team no harm as they had enough fire power waiting.
Called back
When a bowler goes for runs, he is not given his full quota of overs in the interest of the team, similarly with the batsman not finding his touch, he can be called back. But Ponting and Delhi waited for Marsh to come good but unfortunately he did not and it eventually cost Delhi the game and two crucial points. With this defeat Delhi are now placed at 8th position after five games with three losses.
This is an eye opener for all teams to take such calls rather than regret not doing so later and I am sure with time this would be followed after Ravichandran Ashwin was called back or retired hurt in their earlier game.
