Delhi Capitals walked off the field on Sunday evening with a vital win over Rajasthan Royals, yet the mood in the camp remained curious rather than celebratory. Two points banked, yes, but another unpredictable surface at the Arun Jaitley Stadium had left the coaching group scratching heads yet again.
Head coach Hemang Badani summed it up in a sentence that almost felt rehearsed by now: “we’ve stopped discussing the surface”. A pause, then the clincher: “we play this venue as an away venue”.
Those words are no off-the-cuff exaggeration. Since the start of last season Capitals have turned out 12 times in Delhi and won only three – one of those via a Super Over. Five defeats this year, two victories. The contrast with their away record (four wins in six) is stark enough to swallow an entire points table.
Badani laid the numbers bare at his post-match press call. “We’ve had five at this venue plus we’ve had seven now, which is 12 games, and we’ve only had three wins, one of them being a Super Over. That pretty much tells you how the surface has been for us.”
What’s so confounding? In short: nothing stays the same for long. “It hasn’t been conducive to our style of play. We’ve many a times not been able to figure out what the surface is like and that’s the reason why you see those results and those numbers,” Badani admitted.
Normally, a captain and coach turn up, study the grass, feel the hardness, make an educated guess. Here, Capitals reckon they may as well roll the dice. “You generally would ideally look at the grass that’s available in the surface, the texture of the surface, the colour of the surface. But each time we’ve turned up here, we’ve got something very different. So it is what it is. We accept it and move on.”
Three different strips – pitches four, five and six if you’re counting – have hosted games this season. All three have played differently, sometimes within the same week. Badani’s summary was almost a shrug in sentence form: “We are getting bowled out for 60; we are getting bowled out for 150; we are also scoring 260. We don’t know how Pitch No. 4 will play, how Pitch No. 5 will play, how Pitch No. 6 will play,” he said. “We have played on three pitches and all of them have been different each time. So it’s difficult to prepare. When you know this pitch will have a par score of 180, or a par score of 200, or a par score of 250, you structure the side accordingly. But here… whatever is happening is happening.”
Sunday’s contest followed that erratic script. Royals were cruising at 160 for 2 after 14 overs, only to crawl to 193 for 8. The hosts, chasing, flew out of the blocks, slowed, then edged home with balls to spare. “I think even if you look at their innings, they were 160 for 2 [after 14 overs] and then they hardly got runs in the end – I think they got about 33 in the last six and we picked up [six more] wickets,” Badani pointed out. Capitals experienced an almost mirrored slide of their own but, crucially, controlled the tempo. “The same happened to us where we slowed down a little bit but we were cautious because we had a [target] available to us. They had to set a target and we were just looking to create the game because the ball was starting to do reverse. The ball was holding a bit in the surface [too]. It wasn’t easy to bat once the ball got older and hence [we decided] to take the game deep; go hard at the top but take the game deep in.”
Reverse swing, a hint of grip and a bold final spell from the quicks – including four wickets in the last overs – turned the match. Assistant coach Sanjay Bangar, juggling analyst duties in the dug-out, highlighted the younger end of the batting order rather than the bowlers. “Porel has taken the best bowlers on,” he said, a neat nod to the keeper-batter’s emerging role as finisher.
Despite the home headaches, Delhi remain in the playoff conversation. They will, however, play their final league match in Hyderabad. No guesses which venue they secretly prefer right now.
Whether the BCCI’s promised off-season refurb will smooth out Kotla’s mood swings is another matter. For the moment Badani and company will stick to the away mindset – even when the changing-room door opens onto familiar corridors.
