Where they finished last year
Sixth. Once Delhi Capitals (DC) lost four of their first five games, recovery was always going to be tough. They finished with seven wins and seven losses and failed to make the playoffs for the third season running.
What's new in 2025?
A new captain. Axar Patel will lead DC in IPL 2025 after Rishabh Pant entered the auction and went to Lucknow Super Giants for a record INR 27 crore. There were a couple of new options for DC to consider, such as KL Rahul and Faf du Plessis, but the franchise went with Axar.
DC have also had an overhaul in their backroom staff. They brought in Hemang Badani as head coach, replacing Ricky Ponting, while former India batter Venugopal Rao is the new director of cricket. Kevin Pietersen has been named mentor, Matthew Mott the assistant coach, and Munaf Patel the bowling coach for IPL 2025.
DC do have a lot of familiar players in their squad. They retained Axar, Kuldeep Yadav, Tristan Stubbs and Abhishek Porel from last season, and bought back Jake Fraser-McGurk at the auction. Mukesh Kumar was with DC last year while Karun Nair has also played for the franchise in the past.
DC had concerns with their fast-bowling unit last season and they invested in strengthening it, bringing in Mitchell Starc (INR 11.75 crore), T Natarajan (INR 10.75 crore), Mukesh (INR 8 crore) and Mohit Sharma (INR 2.20 core). Their other big-ticket signing was Rahul, whom they picked up for INR 14 crore. DC's spin-bowling unit will be led by Kuldeep and Axar.
Likely best XII
1 Jake Fraser-McGurk*, 2 Faf du Plessis*, 3 KL Rahul (wk), 4 Abishek Porel, 5 Tristan Stubbs*, 6 Axar Patel, 7 Ashutosh Sharma, 8 Sameer Rizvi/Mohit Sharma, 9 Kuldeep Yadav, 10 Mitchell Starc*, 11 T Natarajan, 12 Mukesh Kumar
* denotes overseas player
Big question
Watch out for
KL Rahul's animated discussion with Lucknow Super Giants owner Sanjeev Goenka became a major talking point last season. So did his auction price of INR 14 crore - much lower than what Rishabh Pant, Shreyas Iyer and Venkatesh Iyer went for. Now that he heads to his fifth IPL team, Rahul will want his cricket to do much of the talking. Without the responsibility of captaincy, he might enjoy not having the spotlight on him and become the free-flowing batter that he has shown himself to be in the past.
Which version of Mitchell Starc will turn up for DC? He had a mixed season with Kolkata Knight Riders in 2024, but showed his quality with match-winning spells in the playoffs. He is coming off a long season and an injury layoff, but will be expected to lead the DC attack.
Key stats
Rahul's batting average of 45.46 is the third highest in the IPL among batters to have played at least 20 matches.
Porel was Bengal's second highest run-scorer in the 2024-25 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy with 335 runs at a strike rate of 158.76.
Fraser-McGurk was DC's enforcer in IPL 2024, striking at 234.04 while scoring 330 runs. But his form has seen a steep decline. In 24 T20 matches since the end of IPL 2024, Fraser-McGurk has only managed 382 runs at a strike rate of 136.91 and an average of 15.91.
Who's out or in doubt?
DC had spent INR 6.25 crore for Harry Brook, but he's pulled out of the IPL for a second season running. As a result, Brook is likely to face a two-year ban from the IPL according to the new rule which states that "any player who registers in the auction and after getting picked, makes himself unavailable before the start of the season, will get banned from participating in the tournament and player auction for two seasons." That means Brook will only be available to play in the IPL from IPL 2027.
Starc missed the Champions Trophy with an ankle injury, but he is fit and expected to play all of IPL 2025.
Natarajan missed all of the 2024-25 domestic season with injuries but is fit to start the season.