DC face consistent GT with playoffs hopes on the line
DC need to win all three of their remaining games to qualify without needing to depend on other results
Alagappan Muthu
17-May-2025 • 9 hrs ago
Big picture: It's fun to be normal again
It feels like a whole new tournament. Since IPL 2025 paused last week, the people it is built on knew nothing but uncertainty. The players left for their own safety. Some returned. Others didn't. Some coaches were about to leave but then they heard about the ceasefire and changed their minds. The resumption was supposed to take place in Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, but that's not how it's panned out. So just a normal day where they could pick up a bat or grab a ball and go full-tilt without anything else to worry about must feel so good.
Gujarat Titans (GT) are only one win away from the playoffs. Their style of play is risk-free and replicable. Shubman Gill and B Sai Sudharsan go out there and put a high price on their wicket and figure out what kind of total their bowling attack will be able to defend. Plus, they had almost all of their players still on-site and were among the first teams to get back into training.
Delhi Capitals (DC) resume their season without Mitchell Starc. He had already bailed one match out of the fire for them and his big-game form is almost always on point, so he will be a big miss. DC are coping with that by bringing in another left-arm quick who does some of his best work at the death, Mustafizur Rahman - though it's unlikely he'll feature on Sunday, less than 24 hours after being part of Bangladesh's team in a T20I in Sharjah. A batting line-up that seemed to dovetail perfectly started to hit snags - DC were ahead in a chase of 210 against Kolkata Knight Riders before crumbling to Sunil Narine and they made only 133 for 7 in their last game against Sunrisers Hyderabad, which was rained out before a result could be achieved - so it will be interesting to see how they go about things on Sunday.
Form guide
Delhi Capitals: LLWLW (last five completed matches, most recent first)
Gujarat Titans: WWLWW
Gujarat Titans: WWLWW
In the spotlight: Shubman Gill and Kuldeep Yadav
Shubman Gill, when we last saw him, was just a cog in the machine. Now he appears to be India's Test captain in waiting. The merits of that decision aside, it is a huge moment in the life of a 25-year-old. How does he focus on the task at hand right now - leading GT - when there is something so big right on the horizon? Gill is set to become the second-fastest Indian to 5000 T20 runs - he's 21 short after 153 innings - behind KL Rahul (143 innings).
Having picked up at least one wicket in every match he'd played this season, Kuldeep Yadav has got nothing to show for his work over the last three games. He still remains hard to hit, his last 11 overs costing just 88 runs. His overall economy rate of 7.1 is second only to Varun Chakravarthy (7.0) among spinners who have bowled at least 20 overs this season. Kuldeep needs one more wicket to hit 100 in the IPL.
Team news and probable XIIs
GT might need to start putting contingencies in place for when Jos Buttler leaves them ahead of the playoffs. They have three games left. They only need to win one. They have an opportunity to test their middle order out a bit.
Gujarat Titans (probable): 1 Shubman Gill (capt), 2 B Sai Sudharsan, 3 Jos Buttler (wk), 4 Sherfane Rutherford, 5 Shahrukh Khan, 6 Rahul Tewatia, 7 Rashid Khan, 8 Kagiso Rabada/Gerald Coetzee, 9 Prasidh Krishna, 10 Mohammed Siraj, 11 Arshad Khan, 12 R Sai Kishore.
The IPL's reschedule has hit DC hard. Starc's out and Tristan Stubbs will be packing his bags and leaving on May 30 with his attention shifting to the World Test Championship final. DC need to win all three of their remaining matches to confirm a spot in the playoffs without depending on other results. With Mustafizur unlikely to feature, they may only field three overseas players.
Delhi Capitals (probable): 1 Faf du Plessis, 2 Abhishek Porel, 3 Karun Nair, 4 KL Rahul (wk), 5 Axar Patel (capt), 6 Tristan Stubbs, 7 Ashutosh Sharma, 8 Vipraj Nigam, 9 Kuldeep Yadav, 10 Dushmantha Chameera, 11 Mohit Sharma/Mukesh Kumar, 12 T Natarajan
The big question
DC began the season with four wins in four. But now they're on a downward trend, with only two wins in seven.
Pitch and conditions
Three of the four matches played in Delhi have produced totals above 185. Spin bowlers (26 wickets, 24.07 average, 8.23 economy) have done significantly better than fast bowlers (19 wickets, 44.84 average, 10.45 economy) here. A searing day is expected with temperatures up around 40 degrees Celsius.
Stats and trivia
- KL Rahul is 33 runs short of 8000 in T20s. Considering he will be playing his 214th innings on Sunday, he has a chance to become the third-fastest player to that mark in the format. Virat Kohli's record (243 innings) is under threat.
- GT could play spoilsport, though, because Rashid Khan has a tasty match-up against Rahul in the IPL: 40 runs in 47 balls for three dismissals.
- DC could mitigate that by making sure Axar Patel is out there for a longer period of time. Both the GT spinners will turn their stock balls into him, and Axar has played spin like a boss this season, striking at 192.85. Among those with at least 100 runs against spin this IPL, only Nicholas Pooran has done better (SR 264).
- GT's top three have played an average of 88 balls per innings between them this season. They've dominated games, but that's also resulted in a situation where Nos 4 to 11 have only faced an average of 28 balls per innings, and that could come back to bite them in the knockout stages.
Alagappan Muthu is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo