If you’re a sports fan, I’m sure you’re familiar with this experience. It’s the despairing, gutting feeling of rooting—over unimaginably excruciating periods of times—for teams that will never have a shot at the championship title. You ask loyalists of the New York Knicks in the NBA. Look at Tottenham Hotspurs’ fan clubs in the English Premier League. Or consider the supporters of the Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the homegrown Indian Premier League.
But we’re talking about the Delhi Capitals, formerly the Delhi Daredevils, a team that seems so unconcerned with and removed from the enthusiasm and gusto of its fans (wherever they may be), that they might as well be dissolved and their players redistributed, and nobody would bat an eyelid. We’re in Year 18 of the IPL and, honestly, it’s been hard being a fan. It’s a tiring experience to watch the franchise turn up every year and perform like a hopeless also-ran in a two-tier competition. Go down without a fight when it matters the most. Prise loss from the claws of victory.
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In their eleventh game this season, this team that had seemed the most exciting at the beginning of the competition unravelled in just the sort of unspectacular fashion that you’ve come to associate only with the boys in red and blue. Had it not been for the rain in Hyderabad, the home side would have easily gone on to confirm what they had proposed by the end of the first Strategic Timeout of the game.
After a splendid run in the first seven games, the Capitals have careened into a familiar rut. And even if they do somehow realise the increasingly distant possibility of a playoff berth, any dedicated Delhi fan will tell you which sort of fate awaits them there. Need I even remind you of how the 2020 final panned out? No international league deserves a snoozefest as dispiriting as that night.
After a particularly impressive start to the season, this perennially underwhelming side based in the National Capital has somehow gone back to reminding fans of their no-hoper status. It’s outrageous how a team with the services of giants like KL Rahul and Mitchell Starc could f**k things up this badly. Especially after that timely little reminder Rahul dropped in the dressing room about the importance of peaking at the right time. "If there's ever been a pattern in the IPL of teams that have won, you will see that this is the time that teams that end up winning the competition, start peaking. We speak about having fun, we speak about teams coming together... but the most important thing is: How can all the people here find a way to win? How can we get out of our heads, and start thinking—team, team, team," said a visibly frustrated Rahul, addressing the team.
It’s a sane and timely reminder to not fall for a familiar script. Begin with a tame win, then go on to lose three games. Continue the slide and end up in the bottom half. Or, begin impressively with a series of wins and almost look like making the playoffs but then, arrest the upward trajectory and crash out of the playoffs race. Or even if you do make the playoffs, surrender without so much as a grapple in the knockouts.
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To make it worse—they’ve fielded in the past names that went on to become some of the most phenomenal and accomplished IPL campaigners over the years, from AB de Villiers, Gautam Gambhir and David Warner to Pat Cummins and Shreyas Iyer (even Andre Russell for a season). But all these players didn’t seem to fit into the rather drab state of affairs at the franchise for too long. Unlike teams associated with its multiple title-holder metropolitan counterparts Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai franchises—Delhi has suffered from a complete absence of franchise culture.
The owners don’t seem to have thought it important to keep investing in a balanced core, unlike the more successful teams that have found the right nucleus and atomic energy surrounding it—or to stick to maintaining it season after season. In 2023, de Villiers recalled how the management didn't follow through on their promise. “When I played in the 2010 season, I got called into the office and was told 'you are going to get retained, young AB de Villiers'. I sat alongside David Warner in that meeting. It came as a huge surprise to me a week or two later when I realised I had been released," the South African great said on his YouTube channel.
Scouting, too, has left much to be desired—a failure the ripples of which reach beyond just individual team fortunes. Abhishek Sharma, who made his IPL debut for the Delhi Daredevils with a cracking 46 off just 19 balls, was inexplicably packed off to Hyderabad in the following season. Yet to turn 25, Sharma has to his name the highest IPL score by an Indian batter. Not just Indians—great overseas finds, from Anrich Nortje to Jake Fraser-McGurk have been found out over a season or two.
So inexplicable has every decision been that one’s not quite sure if choosing to go with Pradeep Sangwan over Virat Kohli in the opening draft would have mattered a few seasons in. The management let go of the man responsible for that decision—Virender Sehwag—too, and, quite embarrassingly, Gautam Gambhir, who won three titles for the Kolkata Knight Riders (two of them as captain). In stark contrast is how Chennai Super Kings have held on to the MS Dhoni-Stephen Fleming partnership and Mumbai Indians have ensured stable leadership handovers and smooth core transitions.
Purchases and team compositions at Delhi have seemed equally random. The mind goes back to 2017, when the bowling attack was overstuffed with Kagiso Rabada, Pat Cummins, Mohammad Shami and Chris Morris: all full-timers operating in excess of 145kph—nobody knows why. The Daredevils finished sixth that year.
Along with the other sides in the competition to have never won the competition—Punjab and Bengaluru (Lucknow is a recent entrant)—the Delhi franchise seems to just fulfil one purpose. And that is to serve as clobbering meat for the more dominant sides in the league, be it those eager to get ahead in the playoffs race and peaking at the right time, or those already sitting pretty in the top two, with a couple of shots at the final. It’s a crappy experience for loyal fans rooting for dark horses, hoping naïvely that a new champion will emerge. It’s a severe blow not only to the identity of these bastions—team and fan following—but to the necessary unpredictability of the IPL.
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Give us something. Not everybody is waiting with bated breath for the same old, year after year. Gujarat Titans winning it in their debut season was a thrilling conclusion. But with Mumbai looking more and more dangerous now—Rohit Sharma is back in form, Suryakumar Yadav is in the Orange Cap race, Jasprit Bumrah is hitting the straps after an injury layoff and skipper Hardik Pandya is bringing his imperious touch to every game—it seems more and more likely that we’re going to have a repeat winner yet again. Unless Bengaluru derives inspiration from the WPL and finally brings the cup home.
It's a familiar feeling, like I said. And one I cannot want to get far enough from.