Ranji Trophy: Delhi sit pretty, at home

Till last year, Delhi had failed to gel as a unit and were not able to bring their batting and bowling together. Despite boasting of talented individuals, they never clicked as a team. But this year things seemed to have changed for the better.

Each and every player are performing their roles and putting up performances that might look small, but combined together it tends to be defining.

Just figure this: Delhi’s highest run-getter so far is Virender Sehwag with 333 runs. The highest run-getter overall is Sheldon Jackson with 662 runs. Similarly, Varun Sood is Delhi’s highest wicket-taker with 16 wickets but Pankaj Singh leads the charts with 24 wickets. But when it comes to team performances, Saurashtra are last on the table with Rajasthan on fourth, thanks to their win against Punjab in the last game. What the statistics further reveal is that Jackson is fighting a lonely battle and is getting very little support from his teammates.

As far as Delhi is concerned, they have managed to cull out performances in small chunks from every member. In batting, Unmukt Chand (298 runs), Gautam Gambhir (290), Rajat Bhatia (151) have backed up Sehwag. It’s the same story with the bowling unit. Besides Sood, Navdeep Saini (13), Sumit Narwal (12), Shivam Sharma (11) and Parwinder Awana (10) have all contributed with the ball, picking wickets at key intervals.

Owing to their stellar show, Delhi have also picked up the most wickets. Out of the possible 80 wickets (eight innings in four games), Delhi have taken 70.

Part of the credit goes to their fielding as 40 of those dismissals have been from catches taken. Wicket-keeper Puneet Bisht and Chand are the front-runners in fielding and have managed 25 dismissals between them.

Bowlers economical

Another factor that has given Delhi a boost is that their bowlers have been economical, managing to keep the rate below three. Last year, some of them had been expensive and finished their season at close to four runs an over. And off course their stunning strike rate of below fifty make them an even more accurate bowling unit, with Sood picking a wicket after every 39.1 balls. Last year Parwinder Awana was the only one near 40 while the others went for close to 50.

With Delhi’s batting looking like a nicely settled unit, Odisha will hope to silence them with some disciplined bowling. The visitors will have to be at their best though to put Delhi in any kind of trouble. Odisha have accumulated only 8 points so far, one less than what Delhi had after four matches last year. The visitors are seventh on the table but more than the difference between them in the charts, Odisha’s poor record against the hosts will be a factor that will play on their mind.

With three wins out of four, Delhi’s confidence is sky high. But they will hope they do not lose focus midway through the season and ensure they qualify for the quarterfinals, their first in five seasons.