Delhi – With Delhi Capitals clinging to slim play-off hopes, stand-in skipper Axar Patel won the toss at the Kotla and chose to bowl against Rajasthan Royals, saying he preferred to “see what the surface does first” before chasing. The pitch looked dry, almost straw-coloured, with very little live grass.
Delhi made one tweak, handing a debut to local all-rounder T Vijay in place of seamer Auqib Nabi. Axar kept talk of permutations to a minimum. “We know where we are on the table,” he noted in the TV interview, “but the only thing we can control is today.”
Rajasthan welcomed back Riyan Parag, who takes over the armband from the resting Ravindra Jadeja – officially ruled out for “load management”. Parag confessed he was “happy to lose the toss” because he had been undecided about batting or bowling first on this surface. His side’s other alteration sees batter-keeper Ravi Singh slot in, while quick Adam Milne replaces Tushar Deshpande to bolster the pace attack.
The match is being staged on the centre strip: square boundaries measure 63 metres, the straight hit 73 metres – dimensions that could bring the spinners into play, especially in the second innings when dew is rarely a factor in Delhi at this time of year.
Delhi Capitals
Abishek Porel, KL Rahul (wk), Sahil Parakh, Tristan Stubbs, David Miller, Axar Patel (capt), Mukesh Kumar, Madhav Tiwari, T Vijay, Mitchell Starc, Lungi Ngidi.
Impact bench: Ashutosh Sharma, Sameer Rizvi, Vipraj Nigam, Pathum Nissanka, Karun Nair.
Rajasthan Royals
Yashasvi Jaiswal, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Dhruv Jurel (wk), Riyan Parag (capt), Ravi Singh, Donovan Ferreira, Shubham Dubey, Jofra Archer, Adam Milne, Brijesh Sharma, Yash Raj Punja.
Impact bench: Dasun Shanaka, Lhuan-dre Pretorius, Ravi Bishnoi, Sushant Mishra, Aman Rao.
Key fact: Capitals must win their final two games – and rely on other results – to sneak into the top four, while Royals have already secured qualification but are jostling for a top-two finish that guarantees a second chance in the play-offs.
