Cricket Indian Premier League Prediction

Delhi Capitals vs Chennai Super Kings - Match Preview

🏏 20 May 2023 - 14:00 GMT +0

Delhi Capitals brutally reminded the competition not to take already eliminated teams for granted when they stepped out onto the picturesque HPCA Stadium in Dharamsala and brought the Punjab Kings one step closer to joining them on an early holiday. It now means that Delhi has won three of their last five games (having also defeated playoff contenders Bangalore and group stage winners Gujarat), reinforcing the theory that teams with nothing to lose can sometimes be the ones to fear the most.

If they were to make it four wins from six whilst ending a three-game losing streak against Chennai Super Kings, that will likely intensify the sense of frustration lingering amongst their supporters about where such winning efforts were earlier in the season. It was 450 km north of Arun Jaitley Stadium that Prithvi Shaw recorded a free-flowing half-century after being dropped from the team owing to a series of six scores of fewer than 20 runs, whilst the promotion of Rilee Rossouw to number three - a position that he has flourished in for South Africa, Somerset and Multan Sultans amongst others - paid off immediately as he carved the Punjab attack up from his first ball for a devastating 82* (37).

The least that loyal Delhi fans deserve after enduring 16 seasons of trophyless heartbreak is to see their team go out on a high on home soil. It appears relatively unlikely given their 2-4 home record this season, but those two wins came as underdogs against Kolkata and Bangalore, so it’s certainly not beyond the realms of possibility. As the slowest scoring team in the competition this year (7.96rpo), even after breaching 200 in Dharamsala, Delhi is going to need another extraordinarily uncharacteristic performance to conquer one of the competition’s heaviest scorers (9.14rpo). A repeat of the 140/8 they managed in Chennai earlier this year certainly won’t cut it!

Chennai has a commanding 5-1 record when batting second at the Arun Jaitley Stadium (against all opposition), but certainly won’t be dependent on the coin toss after three of their seven wins this year saw them sent into bat by Lucknow (home), Kolkata (away) and RCB (away). Overall, the Super Kings have won three of their five completed away games this season, including scores of 226 and 235 in Bengaluru and Kolkata respectively. It will likely be difficult to get anywhere near that so late in the season on a slate of pitches that the Delhi captain David Warner bemoaned as “slow” and difficult to assess.

If they are to participate in the second Qualifier and/or the grand final in Ahmedabad, there are a few batters who will want to get a significant contribution away from home under their belt. The trio of Moeen Ali, Ambati Rayudu and Ravindra Jadeja have not yet scored 25+ in an away game, with the latter two averaging in the teens. There have been no such problems for their bowlers, who boasted an enormous 30 wickets during the final four overs across all venues in this campaign, with Mahesh Theekshana collecting wickets in each of his away fixtures and Jadeja in all but one.

⚡ Players to watch: Rilee Rossouw was certainly one of the players that had Delhi fans asking “Where have you been?” just a couple of days ago. As the top scorer of the reverse H2H, with a gruellingly slow 35 on a sluggish pitch, he could be primed to be amongst the Player of the Match contenders once again.

Trumping Theekshana and Jadeja could be Dushar Teshpande, who boasts four 2+ wicket hauls in Chennai’s six away fixtures. Three of those efforts saw him concede more than 40 runs, so the wickets continued to come at a hefty price.

📋 Stat attack: Chennai recorded the highest opening partnership of a match nine times in 2023, compared with just five for Delhi.

• Similarly, the Super Kings also racked up the most sixes in nine games this year, whilst Delhi did so only four times.
• The average first innings score at Arun Jaitley Stadium this year is 168, with four of its six games won by chasing.
• Kuldeep Yadav has just one multiple-wicket haul at home this year, whilst Ishant Sharma has picked five wickets from his 13 overs in Delhi.
• Khaleel Ahmed’s first ball to Ambati Rayudu in the reverse H2H this year was a wicket, taking his career H2H figures to 3/11 from 17 balls.