The Delhi Capitals (DC) weren’t seen as significant championship challengers because of their lack of consistency in the previous three-year IPL cycle. However, DC emerged as the most balanced squad in IPL 2025 after undergoing a nearly comprehensive renovation both before and after the mega-auction.
Furthermore, the team captained by Axar Patel has the unusual distinction of having won every game in the league. DC will now want to continue their winning streak when they play the Mumbai Indians (MI) on Sunday night at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, their old home field.
The way that young players and seasoned players complement one another to help the club win has been DC’s greatest asset. Young leg-spin all-rounder Vipraj Nigam has been a terrific addition to the team, even though Axar and Kuldeep Yadav have been excellent.
Mitchell Starc has contributed significantly, while KL Rahul has been their finest batsman by blasting consecutive fifties as an opener and middle-order hitter with Tristan Stubbs providing solid support.
Despite having a solid overall batting and bowling run rate (9.9 and 8.8, respectively), DC still have to work out some kinks in their armour, according to Cricket-21 data. With just one half-century between their first-choice top order of Jake Fraser-McGurk, Faf du Plessis, and Abishek Porel, DC has the second-lowest batting run rate in the power play of any IPL 2025 side.
DC’s economy rate in the power play was 9.7 after Starc and Axar were hammered for 30 and 16 runs in their one over apiece during their six-wicket victory against RCB. DC will unquestionably become the side to defeat in the tournament if they can work out their kinks versus MI.
As seen by their four losses in five games so far, MI has lived true to their reputation for having a poor start to the tournament. However, the Hardik Pandya-led team will be well aware that every game from now on is crucial if they want to qualify for the playoffs as the league nears its halfway point.
In their home match against RCB, they welcomed back Jasprit Bumrah, but he wasn’t the secret ingredient MI needed to win. Head coach Mahela Jayawardene rightly accepted that MI’s problems actually begin with their power-play performances in both bowling and batting after their 12-run defeat to RCB.
The most concerning thing about MI is that they have lost 10 wickets in the first six overs, which is level with the Chennai Super Kings and second only to Sunrisers Hyderabad (12). Their batting powerplay run rate is 9.1. With the exception of Suryakumar Yadav and Tilak Varma, none of them have a reliable batting position, while Rohit Sharma is having a poor run of form.
In bowling, MI’s power-play situation isn’t very good. In the first six overs of this season, the team’s economy rate of 10.36 places them as the third most costly bowling unit. Additionally, their six-wicket total for the phase is the second-lowest in the league.
Given that the pitch’s characteristics are still unknown to both teams, it would be ideal if MI could make early inroads in light of Bumrah’s successful return to competitive cricket, where he displayed his typical acuity, in order to avoid a defeat and halt the unrelenting DC winning streak.
Teams
Faf du Plessis, KL Rahul, Kuldeep Yadav, Abishek Porel, Mitchell Starc, Vipraj Nigam, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Ashutosh Sharma, Mohit Sharma, Mukesh Kumar, Sameer Rizvi, Karun Nair, T. Natarajan, Darshan Nalkande, Dushmantha Chameera, Donovan Ferreira, Ajay Mandal, Manvanth Kumar, Tripurana Vijay, Madhav Tiwari, and Axar Patel (c) are the Delhi Capitals.
Hardik Pandya (c), Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Tilak Varma, Jasprit Bumrah, Trent Boult, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Ryan Rickelton, Naman Dhir, Robin Minz, Devijith Krishnan, Bevon Jacobs, Will Jacks, Mitchell Santner, Raj Angad Bawa, Vignesh Puthur, Corbin Bosch, Karn Sharma, Ashwani Kumar, Reece Topley, PV Satyanarayana Raju, and Arjun Tendulkar are the Mumbai Indians.
