Rishabh Pant had a very bad day as the captain of Delhi Capitals (DC). His team lost in all parts of the game against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at the Eden Gardens on Monday, April 29. Pant could not lead his team to win.
The southpaw maintained a disgruntled demeanor throughout the game, failing to make an impact with the bat or on the field. Rishabh Pant scored a slow 27 runs off 20 balls in the first innings. DC had to rely on Kuldeep Yadav’s undefeated 35-run effort to finish on 153, which was below par.
Rishabh Pant was not the happiest of captains in the second innings, as DC’s defense of a low total did not go as planned. He lost his anger on several occasions, aiming it at bowlers and fielders equally.
The most pressing problem for supporters with Pant’s captaincy remained his choice to bat first after winning the toss and introducing his frontline spinners during the powerplay, when KKR had gathered more than half of the goal.
DC unexpectedly elected to bat first after winning the toss, despite the knowledge that PBKS had chased down a record score at the site a few nights prior. KKR was able to maintain control of the situation thanks to its spin twins. Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy completed with combined figures of 4-40 from eight overs.
Here are some reactions from Twitter:
“Legendary captaincy pant bro, should have brought in the spinners in the next game,” one tweet read.
“Clown captaincy from Pant,” another fan added.
“Worst captain of IPL is Rishabh Pant,” one user wrote.
“150 was below par with how things were going” – Rishabh Pant
DC was doing well in the tournament. But now they have lost this game. They feel sad about it. DC still have 10 points. But they only have three more games left to play. To win the tournament, they may need to win all three games by a big margin. There are many teams with almost the same points as DC.
“It was a good option to bat first. As a batting unit we didn’t bat well, 150 was below par with how things were going. But we learn from our mistakes, every day is not your day. The way we were going as a team was nice (winning 4 out of their last 5 games), but these games come along in T20s. I think anything around 180-210 would have been a good score, we didn’t give our bowlers enough runs to defend.”
DC will now meet the league leaders, the Rajasthan Royals (RR), on Tuesday, May 7, at the Arun Jaitley Stadium.