Delhi Capitals have decided to part company with three senior names ahead of the 2026 IPL auction. Faf du Plessis, Jake Fraser-McGurk and Mohit Sharma will all head back into the player pool. Left-arm quick T Natarajan, signed for INR 10.75 crore at last year’s mega auction, survives the cull.
The move breaks up the overseas opening partnership the franchise hoped would give them fast starts. Du Plessis, bought in 2024 for his base price of INR 2 crore, mustered only 202 runs in nine innings this season. His strike rate of 123.92 felt pedestrian when set against the 161.62 he managed for Royal Challengers Bengaluru the year before. Put simply, he never located the tempo that once made him indispensable.
Mohit, brought back to add new-ball experience and death-over nous, also struggled. Two wickets in eight matches at 10.28 runs per over is a line the analysts found hard to defend. A senior back-room staffer, speaking on background, admitted the coaching group “needed more control up front and we didn’t get it often enough”.
Fraser-McGurk is the headline exit. The Australian was labelled a long-term project when Delhi used an RTM (right-to-match) card to reclaim him for 2025, having first signed him in 2024. His razor-sharp cameo that season – 222 runs from just 81 balls – hinted at a fearless future. The follow-up, however, brought five single-digit scores in six attempts. By the time the campaign resumed after the mid-season pause prompted by cross-border tensions, he stayed home and Bangladesh seamer Mustafizur Rahman filled the overseas slot as a temporary replacement.
Because temporary signings cannot be retained, Mustafizur is also bound for the auction, leaving Delhi with only one frontline fast-bowling overseas slot filled going into the winter.
Retaining Natarajan is less of a surprise. The left-armer remains one of the circuit’s more reliable yorker specialists – a skill still prized on slow April pitches. Management believe an Indian fast bowler who can close out an innings eases auction pressure. “You rarely get that domestic death-over option at a price that makes sense, so holding on to T was an easy call,” a franchise analyst told local media last week.
Fraser-McGurk’s recent returns have offered little counter-argument. He managed a highest of 36 in three List A fixtures against India A and followed up with 34, 27 and 4 for South Australia. A quiet Major League Cricket stint with San Francisco Unicorns did not lift his stock either.
The Capitals now walk into the December auction with a healthy purse and three clear vacancies: a power-play enforcer, a top-order dasher and a death-over seamer. None of those roles come cheap, yet freeing up nearly INR 15 crore in salary has given them room to chase solutions.
For du Plessis and Fraser-McGurk, meanwhile, the coming weeks will be about convincing other franchises that last season’s numbers are the blip, not the norm. As one rival scout put it, “Class doesn’t disappear – but you do need to show it again, quickly.”
