The 15th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) will be commencing next week. In preparation for the mega tournament, players- local and international- have already started joining up with their respective franchises. But Delhi Capitals is suffering from the problem of around 5 of their 7 overseas players expected to miss the first few matches of the season. The IPL starts on March 26 with the season opener between the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR).
Leading up to that date, Pakistan and Australia will be locking horns with each other in their ongoing 3-match Test series at Lahore that will finish on March 25. Meanwhile, South Africa will host Bangladesh for a 3-ODI series that concludes on March 23.
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The Capitals, in the midst of all this action, will play its first game of the season against the Mumbai Indians on March 27. So technically, most of their overseas players should be available by that date. But the mandatory COVID-19 quarantine restriction put in place by the BCCI could mean that David Warner, Lungi Ngidi, and Mustafizur Rahman expected to miss at least a couple of games.
Warner’s fellow Australian teammate, Mitchell Marsh, meanwhile, has been named in the white-ball series against Pakistan, comprising of 3 ODIs and a T20I. The series comes to a close on 6 April, and it’s from then that Marsh- and Warner, and all other Australia contracted players participating in the IPL- become eligible to play.
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So as it stands at the moment, David Warner, Mitch Marsh, Anrich Nortje, Lungi Ngidi, and Mustafizur Rahman will all end up missing the first couple of games for DC. This leaves Tim Seifert and Rovman Powell as the only 2 options available at the team’s disposal to fit into the playing XI. Seifert will get a good opportunity to partner with Prithvi Shaw at the top order as a replacement for Warner, while Powell would get to make a strong case for himself in DC’s inexperienced middle order.
