Venugopal Rao, the director of cricket for the Delhi Capitals, said that the team’s inability to win an IPL championship in 18 years “hurts” and attributed the most recent disappointing season to uneven departmental performance.
The Capitals’ chances of making the playoffs were almost eliminated on Friday after they lost to Kolkata Knight Riders by 8 wickets, their seventh loss of the year.
The only two original IPL teams who have not yet won the IPL trophy are DC and Punjab Kings. The Capitals’ finest run occurred in 2020 when they advanced to their maiden final but finished runners-up after losing to Mumbai Indians by 5 wickets.
“Obviously, after 18 years in cricket, it hurts. When I look back at my playing days, I always wanted to win. But now, coming into the administrative and coaching side, there is still a lot I am learning through this process,” Rao, who also played for DC between 2011-2013, was quoted as saying by PTI.
DC struggled to gain momentum after winning two games to start the season, with several departments struggling at critical points.
“I cannot point to just one department. In different matches, different departments have let us down. Against Punjab, we scored heavily but then dropped catches while bowling. In some games, the bowlers did well but the batters could not adapt,” Rao said at the post-match conference.
Rao believed that the batting group in particular had trouble adjusting to different conditions.
“In the last two games especially, the batters struggled to adapt to the conditions. Overall, if you ask me, yes, batting has been an area where we needed to adapt better in certain conditions. Even in the first few games, after losing four or five wickets, we still managed to win a couple of matches. But sometimes, I think, the batting unit has let us down.”
He also brought out the team’s failure to capitalize on pivotal occasions during games.
“To win matches, you need to win key patches during the game. We have not done that consistently. If you look back, not just against Punjab but also Gujarat, there were moments where two balls or two runs shifted the momentum away from us.
“In almost every game we have not managed to win the small moments and key phases. That is why we are in this position on the points table right now,” he added.
The decline in performance of spinner Kuldeep Yadav and captain Axar Patel made Delhi’s problems worse.
“With players like him (Kuldeep) and Axar, if both are in good form together, it strengthens the bowling group a lot. When one is doing well and the other is not, especially in the middle overs, it hurts the bowling unit. That is something we are facing at the moment.”
The Capitals are currently in ninth position in the standings with just eight points from 11 games, making it nearly impossible for them to make it to the playoffs.
To remain in contention, they need to win their next three games and hope for other favorable outcomes.
“In the next three games we will see how things work out. We will take it one game at a time. Obviously, we will look at the bench players as well if required. That is definitely something we want to try and assess going forward,” he added.
