From being the first team to stay unbeaten in their first four games in the ongoing IPL 2025 to becoming the last team to get knocked out from the tournament, Delhi Capitals' contrasting journey culminated with a 59-run defeat against MI on Wednesday. Besides that, the Axar Patel-led side also became the first team in IPL history to get eliminated from the tournament after registering four consecutive wins in the first four games.
The Capitals looked completely different in the second half of their IPL 2025 campaign compared to their sensational start in the tournament. Being table toppers for almost two weeks at the start of the tournament and ending up getting eliminated, being in the fifth spot on the table was something that summed up Delhi’s downfall in the ongoing 18th edition.
Given that, it seems quite important to decode and dissect the ‘collapse of the Capitals’ in the ongoing IPL 2025 despite a promising start to their campaign.
An Invincible start to the season
After a narrow 1-wicket win against LSG in their campaign opener, DC took on SRH in the second match of their journey in IPL 2025, in which they won by 7 wickets. With two successive wins to their name, Axar Patel’s men faced CSK in their third game and continued their brilliant run of form to win the game by 25 runs, followed by a 12-run win in their fourth game against RCB.
With these four consecutive wins, the experts started predicting that DC would be one of the four teams to secure a spot in the playoffs, considering their winning run. But something else was waiting to unfold for Delhi in the second half of the tournament.
The unexpected ‘collapse of the Capitals’
In the first match of their dramatic IPL 2025 campaign, DC faced their first defeat in the tournament, losing by 12 runs against the five-time champions, Mumbai Indians. Somewhere, it was the start of ‘losing games’ for DC. This defeat shook their basics to the extent that they could win only two games in eight games so far, resulting in their exit from the tournament.
In their last nine games after four wins in the first games, they have won only two, while losing six games. More than that, they haven’t won a single match in their recent five games in the tournament; they haven’t won even a single match, facing four defeats, alongside a ‘no-result’ game.
This unexpected and sudden ‘Delhi downfall’ stunned the experts and drew a lot of questions and criticism on both the management and the leadership group.
Why and where things went south for DC
One of the major reasons behind this ‘Delhi Debacle’ was a constant change in their opening duo, as they couldn’t line up a proper and permanent set of openers to continue in the tournament. The management kept changing and rotating the openers almost in every game or after every two games. It happened to create an inconsistency and a lack of rhythm in their batting lineup.
Apart from that, another cause-and-effect of this ‘dip in Delhi’s performance’ was their incompetence in the death overs, be it with the bat or the ball. The team combination fielded by the management in a couple of crucial matches is also questionable, as they seemed to fail to understand the requirements of the pitches at different venues.
With that said, there lies a suggestion Delhi Capitals to come up with comparatively better and stable plans in the next seasons. Besides that, there are a lot of lessons to learn and to work on for them from their upside-down journey in IPL 2025.
Also Read: WATCH: IPL team Delhi Capitals gift signed jersey to McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri
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