DC won the toss and elected to bat first on a Kolkata pitch where the ball didn’t come on to the bat as well as it has this year for a change. They were restricted to 153-9 in 20 overs after Punjab Kings chased down 262 a few nights back at the same venue. However, despite conditions being helpful for bowlers, Mitchell Starc’s indifferent form continued.

Starc, who sat out in the last game against PBKS due to a finger injury, replaced Dushmantha Chameera in the XI. He came into this game on the back of a season economy rate of 11.48from seven games and only six wickets to his name.

Up against Prithvi Shaw with the new ball, Starc conceded three consecutive boundaries to start proceedings in the first over of the match, all off full deliveries which were either driven or flicked for four.

After a 15-run first over, Starc then conceded a six and a four against compatriot Jake Fraser-McGurk in his second over, before a slog by the young Australian landed at the hands of the deep square leg fielder to give Starc his only wicket of the night.

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After three overs, DC were 30-2, 27 off which had come off Starc’s bowling.

The KKR spinners then tightened the screws as regular wickets through the middle overs meant Delhi went nowhere with their innings. Sunil Narine registered figures of 1-24 and Varun Chakravarthy bowled a spell of 3-16 from his four overs. However, the KKR spinners weren’t the only ones to have a good outing. Harshit Rana and Vaibhav Arora were hard to score off as well as they bowled their four overs each for 2-28 and 2-29 respectively.

Starc came back for a second spell in the 16th over of the innings with DC reeling at 112-8. KKR would have hoped for Starc to clean up the tail quickly. Instead, he ended up going for 16 runs against the pair of Kuldeep Yadav and Rasikh Salam.

While the first four balls of the over fetched just a single, Kuldeep pulled the fifth towards square leg where the fielder at the boundary line parried it over the rope for six. The next ball was sprayed down the leg side for five wides before Kuldeep flicked the last ball for another boundary as Starc’s figures read 1-43 from three overs. Understandably, he wasn’t given the opportunity to complete his quota as Andre Russell bowled the final over of the innings.

As of now, Starc has a bowling average of 47.1 and an economy rate of 11.79 from eight games in IPL 2024. With the T20 World Cup fast approaching, his form is not only a concern for KKR at the moment, who shelled out a record-breaking INR 25 crore for him at the auction, but also for Australia, who are expected to go in with Starc as one of their main seamers.