Lanning, Shafali and Jemimah are captaincy candidates: Jindal

For most part of the first few hours, the Delhi Capitals were very happy to pull-out from bidding wars, and only going all-guns-blazing for select players. DC’s co-owner, Parth Jindal insisted that the franchise was looking at the purse and recalibrating their numbers, in accordance with the Indian Premier League Auction. 

“That’s the beauty of the Auction. We have to recalibrate the numbers, we are so used to the men’s numbers. The budget is the budget, the way we are looking at it is the percentage of the purse. If you get it wrong, your team suffers and if you get it right, you can really get it right. It is the balancing act,” Jindal said. 

Thus far, the franchise have picked three prime captaincy candidates, in the form of Shafali Verma, who led the India U-19 side to the inaugural edition of the Womens U-19 T20 World Cup. On the other hand, there is the experience of Australia’s Meg Lanning, who has led Australia to multiple trophy wins and Jemimah Rodrigues, a rising contender for the leadership role. 

"No, it's too early for that, but of course there are captaincy options in those names," Parth Jindal, the co-owner of Capitals, said. "One is an India Under-19 captain [Shafali], another is a legend of the game in Meg Lanning. Jemimah too is a wonderful reader of the game. But it all depends on the coach at the end of it, also depends on who else we pick up."

Multiple times during the Auction, Delhi Capitals backed out of the race for several players, and Jindal reckoned that all those players were beyond the ceiling price. 

“The way we approach an Auction is we have a ceiling price for the players. If it goes above that ceiling, we have to pull out. So far, we are very happy. Still early days and a lot of work has to be done.”

“We are happy overall. We didn’t have much time to prepare. The team is going to assemble very quickly, gives us very little time. It is new for me personally, apart from the Indian players, I did not know a lot of players. It is quite tricky, some of the skillsets are different from men’s cricket. There are a lot more all-rounders.”