Rishabh Pant-led Delhi Capitals (DC) faced Sanju Samson’s Rajasthan Royals (RR) in match 9 of IPL 2024 on Thursday (March 28), at the Sawai Man Singh Stadium in Jaipur. Opting to bowl first, DC had RR reeling at 33-3 before Riyan Parag’s magnificent 84*, off 49 balls, took his side to 185-5. Later, Delhi only managed 173 for 5 to lose their second straight game early in the season.

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Following their loss, former Australia cricketer Tom Moody criticised the DC thinktank, who have not include Prithvi Shaw in both their games so far. Ex-Indian opener Wasim Jaffer, during the same discussion, also slammed the team management for not trusting Shaw and not including him in the XI despite not releasing him in the auction as well. 

“It doesn’t make sense due to the fact that you’ve got an Indian international player (Prithvi Shaw) in the dugout. Yes, he hasn’t performed in the IPL like we had all hoped he would, but you can’t score runs from the dugout,” Tom Moody said on ESPNcricinfo.

Ahead of the RR clash, DC’s director of cricket Sourav Ganguly opined on the management’s call to drop Shaw. He told the reporters, “Prithvi Shaw is an opener. We decided to open with Marsh and Warner and Ricky Bhui is a middle-order batter. So they bat at different positions. So it’s actually not Bhui for sure. It’s a different opening combination, they opened for Australia and they have done well together. So we decided to do that.”

Jaffer, however, did not buy into the logic. He stated that there was no point retaining him ahead of the auction and then not making him a part of the playing XI.

Jaffer said, “Now that they have held onto him and not let him go into the auction, I’m surprised they’re not playing him. He’s played for Mumbai for most of the season, so you’d imagine that he’s fit. I’m surprised. Punishing him and then losing the games is not the way to go forward.”

Notably, Shaw managed only 106 runs in the last IPL season from eight matches, his worst-ever season in the tournament. While he is coming into this year’s IPL on the back of some good performances in the domestic circuit, he seems to have lost the team management’s trust and, hence, is not being preferred in the first XI.

Shaw-starrer DC will now host Chennai Super Kings (CSK), on March 31 (Sunday), in their adopted home ground; i.e. the Dr. Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium, Visakhapatnam.

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