Delhi Daredevils (DD) take on the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in an Indian Premier League (KKR) clash at the of Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi on Friday. The big news from the match was that the home team dropped Gautam Gambhir from the playing XI.
Gambhir stepped down as captain of DD, who are languishing at the bottom of the IPL 2018 points table after playing six matches, and gave way to young Shreyas Iyer to lead the side. There was speculation going into Friday's game whether the 36-year-old would also be dropped from the team.
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KKR skipper Dinesh Karthik won the toss at Kotla and elected to bowl. The visitors went in with one change - Mitchell Johnson for Tom Curran. The hosts, on the other hand, made two changes to their side - Colin Munro and Vijay Shankar for Daniel Christian and Gambhir.
Here are the playing XIs
Delhi Daredevils: Prithvi Shaw, Colin Munro, Glenn Maxwell, Rishabh Pant (wk), Shreyas Iyer (c), Vijay Shankar, Rahul Tewatia, Liam Plunkett, Amit Mishra, Avesh Khan, Trent Boult
Kolkata Knight Riders: Chris Lynn, Sunil Narine, Robin Uthappa, Nitish Rana, Dinesh Karthik (c & wk), Andre Russell, Shubman Gill, Mitchell Johnson, Piyush Chawla, Shivam Mavi, Kuldeep Yadav.
Gambhir gave way to Iyer to lead DD for the remainder of IPL 2018. Former India batsman Sanjay Manjrekar, however, feels Gambhir's leadership was not an issue.
Daredevils, yet to win an IPL crown, are in the last spot in the points table after losing five of the six games they figured in, their sole win coming against defending champions Mumbai Indians. "I don't think Gambhir's leadership was a problem, it was just about the batsmen not getting runs, notable failure like (Glenn) Maxwell hurting them. Gambhir, the batsman, thereby had to get runs because the others were failing around him. Gambhir was picked more for his captaincy than his batting, but because the batting group was not clicking, Gambhir the batsman came under scrutiny," said Manjrekar.
"I don't think the leadership was an issue but (they needed to) do something to reboot. You expected something like this after their last result and being at the bottom of the table. This was the time to change something," added the former cricketer.
Manjrekar cautioned there cannot be a dramatic change in DD's fortunes under new captain Shreyas Iyer, unless their batsmen deliver and their bowling unit does not remain too dependent on New Zealand pacer Trent Boult. "Shreyas Iyer as captain can change nothing if batting continues to be a problem and their bowling just cannot be dependent on Trent Boult," he said.
(Inputs from PTI)
