Top 3 reasons why Delhi Capitals had a terrible IPL 2023 and won’t qualify for the Play-offs!

Delhi Capitals are only the 3rd franchise in IPL history to not have won the richest cricketing league in the world. Alongside Royal Challengers Bangalore and Punjab Kings, DC have played in all of IPL editions but the trophy has been eluding them since the beginning.

All the 3 teams have a thing in common – reached the final at least once and lost it. RCB is the only team among them to play 3 finals and lose all three in 2009, 2011 and 2016. Punjab Kings’ only final appearance was in 2014 where they lost against Gautam Gambhir’s Kolkata Knight Riders.

And Delhi Capitals, previous known as Delhi Daredevils have reached the play-offs many times but have entered the Finale just once in 2020. This year too, its certain that the Capital outfit will not be winning the colossal tournament and realistically they will miss out from the play-offs for the second season in a row.

Their IPL campaign has been hampered by the absence of Wicket-Keeper Batsman Rishabh Pant back in December 2022. But there are many reasons to blame for their terrible performances and in this feature, we will discuss about the Top 3 reasons why Delhi Capitals had an underwhelming season.

1. Over-relying on out of form Opener Prithvi Shaw at the start of IPL 2023 : This has to be one of the main reasons why Delhi Capitals lost their first 5 matches in a row. Their Batting order never looked right. Prithvi Shaw definitely has a lot of potential but he failed to showcase it this year. As a result David Warner had to do the initial job himself but he was also too slow. In 6 matches, Shaw scored just 47 runs with his best being 15. In a competition like it is very important for teams to get off to a cracker but Shaw’s incompetency this season is one of the reasons why DC won’t reach the play-offs. England’s Phil Salt replaced him at the top and he even showed what he is capable of but its just too late already.

2. Under-performing Local Batters – IPL was mainly formed to give Young talented Indian players an opportunity to rub their shoulders with top International cricketers and deliver performances. But this year, Delhi Capitals’ local Batters except for Axar Patel were extremely disappointing. DC bought the likes of Sarfaraz Khan, Manish Pandey and Ripal Patel among others but none of them played a single knock which led the team towards victory. In fact another mistake DC made was by sending Axar Patel extremely late despite his red-hot form. Next year either DC will have to look for replacements or hope for the current set of local players to perform.

3. Inconsistency of the Imported Batsmen – It goes without saying that David Warner, Mitchell Marsh and Rilee Rossouw are match winners but their inconsistency is a big reason why DC never got going. While Warner scored slow Fifties initially, his form dipped in the 2nd half of the season. Mitch Marsh too has under-performed with the Bat. In 8 matches he has just 125 runs with a highest score of 63. Rilee Rossouw is a hard hitter of the ball and it was his only his 3rd IPL campaign. He has played 6 matches this year and scored just 122 runs.