Lucknow Super Giants’ Mitchell Marsh plays a shot during the Indian Premier League 2026 match against Delhi Capitals at Bharat Ratna Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana Cricket Stadium, in Lucknow on April 1, 2026.
| Photo Credit: ANI
Lucknow Super Giants put up an embarrassing batting display with some questionable tactical calls to be shot out for 141 in 18.4 overs in their IPL match against Delhi Capitals in Lucknow on Wednesday (April 1, 2026).
Delhi Capitals skipper Axar Patel opted to bowl first and even though the Ekana Stadium wicket wasn’t a belter, there couldn’t be any tangible excuse for LSG unit for its pathetic batting display.
A fit-again T. Natarajan (3/29 in 4 overs), Kuldeep Yadav (2/31 in 4 overs) and the brilliant Lungi Ngidi (3/27 in 3.4 overs), who bowled perhaps a contender for the ‘ball of the tournament’, made life miserable for the home team, which looked as bad on field as it had seemed on paper as per the pre-tournament predictions.
Captain Rishabh Pant, in a surprising move from the team’s perspective, broke a successful opening pair of Aiden Markram and Mitchell March and promoted himself at the top of the order.
Pant (7 off 9 balls) started with a nice bowler’s back-drive off Mukesh Kumar but in the next over was run-out at the non-striker’s end when the bowler was able to get finger tip onto a smashing straight hit from Marsh.
But to be frank, Pant didn’t look comfortable for once despite that opening boundary and it seemed more like a desperation to get his India T20 slot back.
Aiden Markram (11) hit a six and a four, but DC skipper Axar Patel’s wicket-to-wicket delivery breached his defence.
The highly-rated Ayush Badoni (0) edged one from T. Natarajan that was angled across, but it was Ngidi’s newfound confidence with execution of slower deliveries which became the standout moment of the first half.
It was a floating off-cutter that beat the dangerous Nicholas Pooran (8 off 8 balls), whose philosophy hinges on bat-speed saw the loopy trajectory of the delivery dip late. The ball sneaked between the bat and pad to hit the stumps.
In the case of Ngidi, there was no perceptible change in his arm-speed as he considerably took the pace off.
Ngidi, who has perfected the pace-off deliveries with variable lengths tightened the noose on the LSG batters. He also accounted Shahbaz Ahmed with a wide slower yorker, which is a difficult art to execute.
Regarding Kuldeep, he got a bit of punishment initially but he did the job well getting the dangerous Marsh with a googly that saw the bat face turn in his hand and leading edge flying to mid-off.
Teams:
Lucknow Super Giants: Aiden Markram, Mitchell Marsh, Nicholas Pooran, Rishabh Pant(w/c), Ayush Badoni, Abdul Samad, Mukul Choudhary, Mohsin Khan, Mohammed Shami, Anrich Nortje, Prince Yadav. Impact subs: Digvesh Rathi, Avesh Khan, Himmat Singh, Shahbaz Ahmed, Akshat Raghuvanshi
Delhi Capitals: K.L. Rahul(w), Pathum Nissanka, Nitish Rana, Axar Patel(c), Tristan Stubbs, David Miller, Vipraj Nigam, Lungi Ngidi, Kuldeep Yadav, T Natarajan, Mukesh Kumar.Impact subs: Ashutosh Sharma, Auqib Nabi, Sameer Rizvi, Dushmantha Chameera, Karun Nair.
Published – April 01, 2026 08:18 pm IST
