IPL 2024: Nortje, Lalit come in as DC elect to bowl first against unchanged SRH

New Delhi, April 20 (IANS) Delhi Capitals have won the toss and elected to bowl first against Sunrisers Hyderabad on their return to the Arun Jaitley Stadium here on Saturday. The match is also DC captain Rishabh Pant’s return to his home ground since his return to competitive cricket last month.

DC, ranked sixth in points table, come into their first game of IPL 2024 at their original home venue on the back of thrashing Gujarat Titans by six wickets in Ahmedabad. Fourth-placed SRH, on the other hand, enter into this match after shattering their own record of highest-ever IPL total by posting 287-3 against Royal Challengers Bengaluru, and win by 25 runs.

After winning the toss, Pant, who is playing an IPL match in Delhi after 1813 days, said off-spin all-rounder Lalit Yadav replaces seam-bowling all-rounder Sumit Kumar. Fast-bowler Anrich Nortje comes in for veteran pacer Ishant Sharma, who suffered a back spasm just five minutes before the toss happened.

David Warner also comes back into the playing eleven after missing DC’s last game due to finger injury and replaces Shai Hope, who goes into the substitutes. “Wicket looks pretty good, we would like to chase because we are playing more as a batting unit. We have more batters. Maybe there will be dew. The only thing we said is "stay in the contest".”

“Yes they've been playing really good cricket but you can't let them get away with it. Ground doesn't matter, end of the day you have to play good cricket. We're looking to improve each and every match,” said Pant.

SRH skipper Pat Cummins said his side is unchanged from their previous match against RCB. “The way the boys have been batting, we know teams are going to come hard at us. (We are playing) same batting lineup, we'll have a look at the bowling a little later on.”

Playing XIs

Delhi Capitals: David Warner, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Abishek Porel, Rishabh Pant (captain & wicketkeeper), Tristan Stubbs, Axar Patel, Lalit Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav, Anrich Nortje, Khaleel Ahmed and Mukesh Kumar

Substitutes: Prithvi Shaw, Shai Hope, Praveen Dubey, Rasikh Dar Salam, Sumit Kumar

Sunrisers Hyderabad: Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Aiden Markram, Heinrich Klaasen (wicket-keeper), Abdul Samad, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Shahbaz Ahmed, Pat Cummins (captain), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mayank Markande, and T Natarajan

Substitutes: Umran Malik, Anmolpreet Singh, Akash Singh, Glenn Phillips, Washington Sundar

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