Rahul Dravid’s team RR suffered a defeat against DC when Mitchell Starc used his brilliant Super Over performance to bring Delhi victory in their IPL 2025 match held at New Delhi’s Arun Jaitley Stadium. The clinical death bowling of Starc produced a Super Over situation after which RR’s selection choices became generating controversy. The head coach Dravid along with captain Sanju Samson chose Hetmyer and Parag as batting replacements instead of Nitish Rana despite his previous performance which resulted in 51 runs from 28 balls. Cricket legend Cheteshwar Pujara expressed doubt regarding RR’s substitution choice since he believed Rana was a more suitable candidate for that critical decision.

Pujara Criticises Rahul Dravid

Speaking to ESPNCricinfo, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ian Bishop criticised Dravid and Samson’s game plan for the Super Over. Pujara felt that RR should have included Rana, and should have also started with Jaiswal. “I think Nitish should have been there in those three,” he said.

Pujara Views On What He Should Have Done

“But I don’t know whether he should have started. I would want Jaiswal to start because of the way he bats against Mitchell Starc – his record (against Starc) has been phenomenal across formats (26 runs from 15 balls without a dismissal in T20s and 133 from 203 with three dismissals in Tests).”