Introduction-
The festival of cricket in India is set to hit the capital city as the home team- Delhi Capitals, will meet the defending champions Gujarat Titans in a quest to accrue two important points. Arun Jaitley Cricket Stadium (previously known as Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium) has only been host to 4 IPL matches (during IPL 2021) in previous three seasons, as the Covid pandemic pushed IPL out of India in 2020 and interdicted the home/away venue feature in 2022 to restrict it to the limited venues.
The Titans, having beaten CSK in the tournament opener, will start the match as the favorites against the Capitals who crashed to a big defeat against Lucknow Supergiants in their first match. Here is the preview for Match 7 of Tata IPL 2023.
Team Previews-
Gujarat Titans-
The defending champions are not a team full of star players like many other teams, but they seem to understand well how T20 games are won. In the absence of their star player David Miller, and at some stage Kane Williamson, it was not an easy task to chase 178 against a Dhoni led team. But Gujarat Titans did the job clinically to remind people of their strength as a T20 side.
Kane Williamson has been ruled out of the season, for whom the replacement has not been yet announced. David Miller is all likely to play this match and will provide a huge boost to the batting line up. Titans’ bowling unit is all but in the hands of overseas players, as they filled three out of top 5 bowling options in the forms of Joshua Little, Alzarri Joseph & Rashid Khan and although Josh Little was somewhat rusty in the first match, they are likely to continue with the same combination.
Abundance of bowling options may push Titans’ to drop Yash Dayal- who bowled only an over in the first match- for someone like Sai Sudarshan or Abhinav Manohar.
Delhi Capitals-
In the absence of overseas pace options- Anrich Nortje, Lungi Ngidi, and Mustafizur Rahman- Capitals’ all-indian bowling attack looked blunt against the firepower of Lucknow Supergiants. On a not so easy batting track, Capitals conceded far too many runs, which proved to be true in the end.
Anrich Nortje and Lungi Ngidi will most likely be available for this match. Capitals may ponder about including both the pacers to strengthen their bowling unit and leave out two of Mitch Marsh, Rille Rossouw and Rovman Powell for Manish Pandey and Yash Dhull. Mustafizur Rahman may continue to be unavailable due to national duties.
It will be interesting to see if Sarfaraz Khan, after his poor outing with gloves in his hands, is made to continue or Capitals look for someone like Phil Salt to don the gloves.
Probable Playing XIs-
Gujarat Titans-
Shubhman Gill, Wriddhiman Saha (WK), Hardik Pandya (C), Vijay Shankar, David Miller, Abhinav Manohar/Sai Sudarshan, Rahul Tewatia, Rashid Khan, Joshua Little, Mohammad Shami, Alzarri Joseph (Impact players- Yash Dayal, Abhinav Manohar/Sai Sudarshan, Jayant Yadav, KS Bharat, Mohit Sharma)
Delhi Capitals-
David Warner, Prithvi Shaw, Mitchell Marsh, Manish Pandey, Sarfaraz Khan, Rovman Powell, Axar Patel, Anrich Nortje, Kuldeep Yadav, Mukesh Kumar, Khaleel Ahmed (Impact players- Abhishek Porel, Lalit Yadav, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Yash Dhull, Aman Hakim Khan)
Interesting facts and milestones-
- Gujarat Titans have won 9 matches out of 10 while chasing. And interestingly 8 of those 9 wins have come in the final over.
- David Warner needs 63 runs to complete 6000 IPL runs. He will be the first foreign player to score 6000 runs in IPL, way ahead the second best foreigner AB De Villiers who has 5162 runs to his name. Overall, only Virat Kohli (6624) and Shikhar Dhawan (6284) are ahead of David Warner
- 77 more runs and David Warner will become 5th player to score 2000 runs for Delhi franchise
Pitch and weather report-
Mostly a batting paradise due to relatively smaller boundaries, chasing has been the choice for teams at this venue. Out of the last 4 IPL matches here, 3 have been won by the team batting second. Also, in seven T20Is here, chasing teams have been successful 4 times.
The temperature will hover between 24-28 degree celsius during the match time, the weather will be slightly overcast but minimal chances of rain.
Venue- Arun Jaitley Cricket Stadium, New Delhi
Date and Time- 4th April 2023, 7:30 PM Onwards
Live Streaming- Star Sports Network (Television), Jio Cinema (OTT/Digital)
Dream XI Team-
