Delhi Capitals flew Mustafizur Rahman in a chartered plane on the day of their first match in this year’s IPL. What follows is a farce. Despite the presence of the Bangladeshi pacer in Delhi’s campaign on social media, Delhi did not play Mustafiz in any of the first three matches. Despite three changes in the Delhi XI against Rajasthan Royals in Guwahati, Assam on Saturday, the cutter master did not get a chance. A Mustafiz-less Delhi suffered the bitter taste of a hat-trick defeat. Rajasthan beat Delhi easily by 57 runs to get their second win in three matches. Two openers Jos Buttler (79 from 51 balls) and Jaiswal (60 from 31 balls) stormed the fifties, Rajasthan scored 199 runs for four wickets.

Finally, Shimron Hetmyer played a cameo inning of 21 balls for 39* runs. Delhi’s foreign quota pacer, Anrikh Norie, remained wicketless with a maximum of 44 runs in four overs, keeping Mustafiz in place. In reply, despite captain David Warner’s (65 from 55) fifty, Delhi was stopped at 142 for nine wickets. Trent Boult and Yuzvendra Chahal took three wickets each. Despite not being able to win the team, Warner made the record of the fastest 6000 runs in the IPL (165 matches) yesterday on the way to fifty. In the other match of the day, MS Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings (159/3) beat Rohit Sharma’s Mumbai Indians (157/8) by seven wickets.