Rishabh Pant is set to attend Delhi Capitals’ (DC) first home game against the Gujarat Titans (GT) to be played on Tuesday, April 4 at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in New Delhi. Pant isn’t a part of the squad, but head coach Ricky Ponting has regularly talked about making the wicketkeeper-batter a part of the team’s setup.

Pant was ruled out of IPL 2023 after he suffered multiple injuries in an accident at the Delhi-Dehradun highway. While David Warner replaced him as the skipper of the Capitals, Abhishek Porel was roped in as Pant’s replacement as wicketkeeper in the team.

"There's good news for our spectators tomorrow. Despite his injury, Rishabh Pant is coming to support his team. He is a star of Delhi (Capitals). I hope spectators will give him a clap that he is coming among his cricketers despite such injury," Rajan Manchanda, Joint Secretary, DDCA, was quoted as saying.

Pant has been a part of the DC setup since the 2017 edition and has been a crucial part of the team. Back in 2021, the southpaw was named as the skipper of the team after Shreyas Iyer missed the first-half of the tournament due to injury.

Even after Iyer came back, Pant was retained as their skipper. Pant was also among India’s standout batter last year, especially in Test cricket.

Capitals off to poor start

The Capitals, in the meantime, did not get off to the best of starts by any means. In their first match, they lost to KL Rahul’s Lucknow Super Giants by 50 runs at the Bharat Ratna Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana Cricket Stadium in Lucknow.

David Warner scored a half-century, but his efforts were not enough for DC to secure victory. Mark Wood’s five-wicket haul and Kyle Mayers’ 78 blew them away.