Observations, opinions and anecdotes - Straight Outta DC, from just another bloke who’s traveling with the Delhi Capitals.

September 29, 10:27 PM GST. The squad sat lined up in their assigned booths on either side of Sheikh Zayed Stadium’s narrow and long dressing room. Their faces were long too, having just gotten changed after a hard loss against the Sunrisers Hyderabad.

“Not our best night, and that’s fine,” said an authoritative yet empathetic voice from the front of the room.

“As I say, we make mistakes sometimes… Chin up! A long way to go in this tournament yet, we know that. We’ve got two wins in the bank. We’ve just gotta get a few more in the next couple of weeks.”

Ricky Ponting was not going to let one loss leave his men dejected.

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I will come back to the aftermath of the loss against the Sunrisers. But first, let me take you back in time to our opening encounter against Kings XI Punjab. Cricket experts and fans alike, a large portion of the cricketing fraternity had touted a balanced Delhi Capitals outfit as one of the strongest squads of the season. For good reason, I might add. There’s pressure that comes with that tag, and not to mention the rustiness that comes with not having played a professional game in about 18562 days.

Both of those things were evident as our batting suffered a couple of mini collapses and we had just 100 runs on the board batting first with three overs to go. You know what happened on the field from that point on, there are no spoilers here. I want to take you into the dugout, the dressing room and Palace Downtown.

At the end of the first innings, after Marcus Stoinis did what he did, he walked into the dressing room grinning from ear to ear. The squad was jubilant for him and congratulated Stoin on an incredible knock. The genuine outpour of love and the brotherhood made it hard for me to believe that this was the first game Marcus was playing with this bunch of cricketers.

In the next couple of hours, we snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, put it back, and snatched it again. There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and ending up on the right side of an absolute humdinger in your opening game of an IPL season in the middle of a global pandemic is one of them. (My apologies, J.K. Rowling. I had to take liberty and modify that quote.)

A 20% ecstatic and 80% relieved team got together for Ricky Ponting’s post-match talk. At this point, let me tell you about one of Punter’s long-standing traditions with Delhi - The Change Room’s Man of the Match. Ponting will put his reasons forward and present a badge to whoever he thinks had a big role to play for us in that game. This takes place irrespective of a win or a loss, and it is never the player who is awarded the Man of the Match at the presentation on broadcast.

Ashwin walked away with the badge after the first match, for his game-changing double-wicket over, his first for DC. Once we got to Palace Downtown, the players, the support staff and the management got together for the team dinner. Again, these dinners are mandatory irrespective of the result of the game. There’s an unspoken rule at these team dinners, one that’s become a part of the Delhi Capitals culture. The match is very rarely discussed. Those conversations are left behind in the change rooms. At the post-match get together, conversations are about life, families, music - basically anything other than that night’s game.

The music that night started off with hip-hop. Hetty led the way with the moves. A little later into the night, DJ Rishabh Pant and his boombox began to play some groovy Punjabi music. That worked a charm as it got a retreating Gabbar to stay back and shake a leg for some more time. Once the conversations got deeper, the music switched to some soothing Coke Studio tracks in the background.

Conversations, music, a few rounds of golf and some delicious cake, the DC family spent a memorable night celebrating a memorable win.

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Cut to Match #2, the nerves from the opener are long gone, and we manage to deliver a clinical performance against the mighty Super Kings. The spirits are up. In his post-match speech, Ricky Ponting is addressing Anrich Nortje after a fiery spell in only his second IPL game.

He looks down at his notepad and says, “The only thing I’ve got written about you tonight is that you’ve got to have a shave before the next game.” The room erupts with laughter, Nortje included. He’s got no intention to shave his Mo, but he’s got every intention to deliver more such spells day in and day out.



Anrich Nortje and Axar Patel received their Change Room’s Man of the Match badges. Celebrations were in order. Prithvi Shaw, who had won the Man of the Match award that night, cut the cake before the dinner. That night, the Indian DC stars were in the mood for some evergreen Kishore Kumar. And as always, match talk didn’t make it to the hotel.

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September 29, 10:32 PM GST. Ricky Ponting has almost come to the end of his monologue after the hiccup against Hyderabad. Without once pointing a finger or singling out a member of the team, Punter has listed out things that could have gone better during the course of those 40 overs in Abu Dhabi, and a couple of areas the team as a whole can improve upon before their next fixture at the same venue.

The Change Room’s Man of the Match has slipped Ricky’s mind. Ryno reminds him, and he promptly hands over the badge to KG for yet another display of top-quality fast-bowling. He congratulates Rabada and walks back to his spot.

A 2-hour bus journey from Abu Dhabi back to Dubai awaits.

“Alright, let’s have some fun on the bus on the way back. Get some music going. We win together, we lose together. Let’s have fun on the bus.”

Just like that, long faces turned into half-smiles. On matchdays, the players travel on a different bus. Therefore, I wasn’t there to witness what happened on the bus. I’m sure the genre of music changed every few minutes though.

When the squad got back to the hotel after the two-hour drive, the mood was uplifted. There were no downhearted players at the team dinner. If I hadn’t watched the game, I wouldn’t have been able to decode from body language if they’d won or lost that night.

Of course, I can’t predict the result of what’s going to happen when we play the Knight Riders in Sharjah on the 3rd of October. One thing is for sure though, Ricky Ponting has ensured that no player carries baggage from the previous match to the next.