IPL Match 40 Preview as Lucknow take on Delhi Capitals at the Ekana Stadium as KL Rahul faces his former side.
IPL Match 40 sees the homecoming of KL Rahul as Delhi Capitals will take on the Lucknow Super Giants.
KL Rahul was on his third season with the Lucknow Super Giants during the previous IPL. Everything was going well until they had to play Sunrisers Hyderabad. After that, everything broke in a single night—actually, in only 9.4 overs. The globe watched live footage of the owner of the LSG squad reprimanding his own captain. After that, there was no turning back.
Although Rahul is now with a different team and would have seen Sanjiv Goenka sooner, he was unable to attend his child’s birth when the Delhi Capitals played LSG for the first time. A recurring motif in IPL 2025 has been former players returning to harm their former teams. On Tuesday night, will he be as driven?
Rishabh Pant took Rahul’s position, but he’s still getting used to his new role. Just 106 runs have been scored by the new captain in seven innings. However, LSG appears to have surpassed expectations in spite of his poor performances, their bowling attack’s injuries, and their opening defeat to DC. Five of their last seven games, including four very close ones, have been victories. LSG would move up to the second spot on the points standings with a victory in Lucknow.
Abdul Samad, who plays for LSG as a finisher, has amassed 111 runs with a strike rate of 222. Samad finished with 30 off just 10 balls in their most recent encounter after hitting Sandeep Sharma for four sixes in the penultimate over. Samad also had success pursuing Adam Zampa, Harshal Patel, and Arshdeep Singh earlier in the season. Samad has helped his team rise from the bottom of the order, despite all the focus on Pant and the top three in LSG.
Mitchell Starc is the second most costly bowler among those who have bowled at least 25 overs this season, with an economy rate of 10.68. After taking eight wickets in his first two games, he has only managed to score twice in his last five games. However, Starc’s reverse-swinging yorkers were the main reason why DC initially forced the Rajasthan Royals into a stalemate last week before winning the Super Over.
Vipraj Nigam of DC and Digvesh Rathi of LSG are two Indian youths who have distinguished themselves in the IPL. There isn’t much separating them in terms of numbers: Nigam has seven wickets at an average of 27 and Rathi has nine at an average of 26.44. If the Lucknow pitch is favourable to spinners, expect one or both of them to have a say.