New Delhi, May 18 (IANS) Delhi Capitals head coach Hemang Badani has conceded that the pitches at their home venue Arun Jaitley Stadium consistently worked against his team’s strengths, saying the side were unable to figure out the nature of surfaces at their home ground through much of the IPL 2026 season.

Though DC enthralled 31,200 fans with a five-wicket victory over Rajasthan Royals, they managed to get only two wins from seven home matches this season. It’s something which also proved to be their undoing in the 2025 edition of the competition, where they got only one win out of five games in New Delhi.

“I think if you go back and see, if you are able to break the season into two halves about what’s happened at home and what’s happened away, we have had four wins in six games away and we have primarily struggled at home.

“We have literally had our second win at home this year and if I had to speak of what’s happened from last year, we have had five at this venue plus we have had seven now, which is 12 games and we have only had three wins and one of them being a Super Over.

“That pretty much tells you how the surface has been for us. It hasn’t been conducive to our style of play. We’ve, at many times, not been able to figure out what the surface is like. That’s the reason why you see those results and those numbers,” Badani told reporters after DC’s five-wicket win over Rajasthan Royals.

He also used Sunday’s game as an example of how DC had to adapt on the fly to close their home leg on a high. “Speaking of this game, I think even if you look at their innings, they were 160 for two, and then they hardly got runs in the end. I think they got about 33 in the last six and picked up eight wickets. The same happened to us where we slowed down a little bit.

“But we were cautious because we had a scoreboard available to us. They had to set a target. We were just looking to create the game, because the ball was starting to do reverse and holding a bit on the surface. It wasn’t easy to bat once the ball got older. Hence, we’ve said, take the game deep, go hard at the top, but take the game deep in the end.”

Highlighting the complicated relationship with their home venue, where their loss percentage stands an inexplicable 71.4 percent, Badani further talked about how the DC camp has even stopped talking about how conditions at Kotla would pan out, just like how Axar Patel said during toss time. “Literally the same with me. We’ve stopped discussing the surface. We play this venue as another venue.

“You generally would ideally look at the grass that’s available on the surface, the texture and color of the surface. But each time we’ve turned up here, we’ve got something very different. So, it is what it is. We accept it and we move on. It should at least be where you know what you’re expecting. Here we didn’t know what this surface was going to do to us.

“One match we’re out on 60, another on 150, another on 260. So we don’t know how to consistently play pitch No. 4, No. 5, No. 6. We’ve played on three surfaces and if you look at the numbers of all three, you’ll think it’s 19-20. So that is difficult for you to prepare.

“We know that if pitch No. 5 is a 180 pitch, pitch No. 6 is a 200 pitch, pitch No. 4 is a 250 pitch, then you structure the side accordingly. You structure your 11 and 12 accordingly. But here, it’s just going on and we had stopped discussing the surface.

“We play this venue as an away venue. You generally would ideally look at the grass that’s available on the surface, the texture of the surface, the colour of the surface, but each time we’ve turned up here we’ve got something very different,” elaborated Badani.

Sunday’s game was also an instance of bowling and batting performances clicking collectively for DC, who still have a very small chance of entering the playoffs. Mitchell Starc’s four-fer was complemented by the opening pair of KL Rahul and Abishek Porel showcasing glittering strokeplay to be 72/0 in power-play – DC’s best batting powerplay returns in the season.

Eventually, Rahul and Potel had a superb 105-run opening partnership, making it DC’s second 100-plus opening stand of the season. Co-incidentally, both century-plus stands of DC’s opening pair have come against RR.

On DC frequently rotating opening combinations through the season, where they also tried Pathum Nissanka and Sahil Parakh, Badani said decisions of that nature always appeared far easier in hindsight than they were at the time of making.

“I think the way I see it is, hindsight is a beautiful thing. To think of everything once everything is done, it’s like wow, it’s like Eureka, we know what’s happening. But you’re obviously trying to figure out something to start with. If you go back to our season in 2025, our issues were up top.

“Our openers, Faf du Plessis, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Abishek Porel, KL Rahul, we just couldn’t figure out the right opening partnership. Hence we were keen to have a proper opener with KL and that’s why we went to a Pathum Nissanka. That’s why we went to a Ben Duckett. We were quite keen to get that partnership at the top going.

“But I would ideally say that Pathum did give us something. He’s given us 40s, 50s, 60s. Yes, I could be greedy and say maybe Pathum could have given me a game of 80 or 100, but I think he’s not done badly. It’s more the case now with Abishek Porel giving us a 100 partnership, which has happened later through the season. But this is a very easy conversation to have right now. So it is what it is. We accept it and we move on,” he concluded.

–IANS

nr/