Coming off a heart-breaking loss and star all-rounder Ben Stokes's injury-forced ouster, a beleaguered Rajasthan Royals will hope for another inspirational knock from new skipper Sanju Samson when it faces a confident Delhi Capitals in the IPL match in Mumbai, on Thursday.
While Delhi made a superb start under new captain Rishabh Pant, clinching a seven-wicket win over Chennai Super Kings in their opening contest, Rajasthan suffered a four-run defeat to Punjab Kings in a high-scoring match on Monday night.
Chasing a mammoth 222 for victory, Samson (119 off 63 balls) played a blinder of an innings on his debut as captain but couldn't get his side over the line, as he was dismissed off the final ball of the innings while going for a maximum with Rajasthan needing five runs off the last delivery.
The defeat shattered Samson, who single-handedly kept his team in the contest, playing some delightful strokes during his blistering knock, which included 12 boundaries and seven sixes.
As if the loss was not enough, Rajasthan were dealt a severe blow on Tuesday when Stokes was ruled out of the remainder of the tournament with a broken finger. He sustained that injury during the agonising defeat.
In his absence, the pressure will be on the likes of Jos Buttler, Shivam Dube and Riyan Parag to deliver the goods and provide ample support to their young skipper, who was sensational in the first match.
The likes of Manan Vohra (12), Buttler (25) Dube (23), Parag (25) all got starts but failed to lend the much-needed support to Samson.
The major worry for the Royals team management will be the performance of its bowling unit.
It looked rusty and completely out of sorts in their opener.
Barring young Chetan Sakariya (3/31), who had a fantastic debut, all other Rajasthan bowlers went for runs and looked completely clueless against the opposition batsmen.
Mustafizur Rahman, Chris Morris, Stokes, Shreyas Gopal, Rahul Tewatia all went for big runs and need to pull up their socks quickly.
Last edition's runners-up Delhi Capitals, on the other hand, had a perfect start to their campaign, beating three-time champions Chennai Super Kings CSK with consummate ease.
Opting to field, Delhi allowed CSK to pile up a competitive 188 for 7, but Shikhar Dhawan and Prithvi Shaw made a short walk of the target with a 138-run opening partnership that laid the foundation for victory.
Both Dhawan (85 off 54) and Shaw (72 off 38) played their strokes from the word go and looked in complete control during their knocks.
Pant (15 not out) and Marcus Stonis (14) did the rest as Delhi comfortably reached home with eight balls to spare.
On the bowling front, Chris Woakes (2/18) and Avesh Khan (2/23) had a good outing in the first game and would look to carry on their form, but the likes of Ravichandran Ashwin, Tom Curran, Amit Mishra and Stoinis had a forgettable outing and will be desperate to make amends on Thursday.
The contest will also witness a test of wits of two new captains in Pant and Samson.
Teams (From):
Rajasthan Royals: Sanju Samson (c & wk), Jos Buttler (wk), Ben Stokes, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Manan Vohra, Anuj Rawat, Riyan Parag, David Miller, Rahul Tewatia, Mahipal Lomror, Shreyas Gopal, Mayank Markande, Andrew Tye, Jaydev Unadkat, Kartik Tyagi, Shivam Dube, Chris Morris, Mustafizur Rahman, Chetan Sakariya, KC Cariappa, Liam Livingstone, Kuldip Yadav, Akash Singh.
Delhi Capitals: Rishabh Pant (c & wk), Shikhar Dhawan, Prithvi Shaw, Ajinkya Rahane, Shimron Hetmyer, Marcus Stoinis, Chris Woakes, R Ashwin, Amit Mishra, Lalit Yadav, Pravin Dubey, Kagiso Rabada, Anrich Nortje, Ishant Sharma, Avesh Khan, Steve Smith, Umesh Yadav, Ripal Patel, Vishnu Vinod, Lukman Meriwala, M Siddarth, Tom Curran, Sam Billings.
Match starts at 7:30 PM
