Delhi Daredevils will aim to snap their streak of nine home match losses when they face Mumbai Indians in their Indian Premier League (IPL) contest here at the Ferozeshah Kotla on Thursday.
Daredevils lost all their home matches last season to become the bottom-placed team. They have started on the wrong foot this year too, losing their first two matches to Rajasthan Royals and Kolkata Knight Riders, which has stretched their home losing streak to nine matches since 2013.
They have won only two of their five matches in the league so far to be at the fourth spot in the standings, displaying moderate performances.
But Daredevils will fancy their chances since their opponents are in a worse shape than them.
Mumbai, similar to Delhi, boast a strong squad on paper, but have performed poorly in their five matches so far, winning only once.
Delhi will also look to count on their positives which have emerged from their matches. Their batting has looked strong on occasion with star man Yuvraj Singh displaying flashes of his past brilliance.
Similarly, Delhi's bowling, led by the tournament's leading wicket-taker leggie Imran Tahir (10 wickets from 5 matches), has also shown signs of competency.
His partnership with fellow leg-spinner Amit Mishra has been one of the highlights of the team.
Mumbai's problem has primarily been with bowling. They lost their first four matches because of malfunctioning of the bowling unit. Their sole win against Royal Challengers Bangalore was a close-fought win despite the team posting a massive 209 runs.
Still, they will hope their Rohit Sharma-spearheaded batting will post a big score again on Thursday, which will be defended by their bowlers.
Skipper Rohit Sharma will draw comfort from experienced off-spinner Harbhajan Singh's form (8 scalps from 4 games) who seems to have sprung back into life after spending a considerable time away from the national team.
The squads:
Delhi Daredevils: Jean-Paul Duminy (captain), Yuvraj Singh, Mayank Agarwal, Manoj Tiwary, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Angelo Mathews, Amit Mishra, Mohammed Shami, Albie Morkel, Quinton de Kock, Zaheer Khan, Chidhambaram Gautam, Travis Head, Imran Tahir, Shreyas Iyer, Kedar Jadhav, KK Jiyas, Domnic Muthuswami, Shahbaz Nadeem, Gurinder Sandhu, Marcus Stoinis, Saurabh Tiwary, Jaydev Unadkat, Jayant Yadav, Srikar Bharat.
Mumbai Indians: Rohit Sharma (captain), Aaron Finch, Ambati Rayudu, Abhimanyu Mithun, Aditya Tare, Parthiv Patel, Kieron Pollard, Corey Anderson, Lasith Malinga, Harbhajan Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Marchant de Lange, Pawan Suyal, Shreyas Gopal, Lendl Simmons, Pragyan Ojha, Mitchell McClenaghan, Aiden Blizzard, Akshay Wakhare, Nitish Rana, Sidhesh Lad, Hardik Pandya, Jagadeesha Suchith, Unmukt Chand and R Vinay Kumar.
--Indo-Asian news Service
sam/vt
