In forty-eight hours at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, Delhi Capitals managed to be involved in two of the most statistically extreme performances in IPL history, on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Two days apart, the same ground, the same franchise, the same season. On April 25, DC posted 264 for 2 and conceded the highest successful chase in the competition’s history.

On April 27, Delhi Capitals were bowled out for 75, their lowest ever IPL total, and lost by nine wickets in 6.3 overs. No team in the history of T20 cricket has gone from one extreme to the other in such a short space of time.

It is the most dramatic Jekyll and Hyde act this format has ever produced, and it raises questions about Delhi Capitals that go considerably deeper than two bad days.

DC vs RCB: The 75 all out and how it happened so fast

The DC’s collapse against RCB on Monday evening was not a slow deterioration, it was an ambush. Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Josh Hazlewood took the new ball and within five overs Delhi Capitals were eight for six. Not eight for two. Not eight for three. Eight for six.

Bhuvneshwar finished with three for five, three for five, numbers that belong in a club cricket scorecard rather than an IPL match report, having removed KL Rahul, Sahil Parakh and Sameer Rizvi before any of them had the faintest idea what was happening. Hazlewood added four for twelve with the kind of ruthless accuracy that left no partnership room to breathe.

Abishek Porel’s 30 was the only score of note in a DC innings that lasted 16.3 overs. The total of 75 is now Delhi’s lowest ever IPL score, and RCB chased it in 6.3 overs without losing a wicket until very late, Devdutt Padikkal finishing unbeaten on 34 and Virat Kohli, coming home to this ground needing eleven runs for 9,000 IPL runs, reaching his milestone and ending on 23 not out.

The match lasted approximately two hours and 30 minutes in total. Delhi Capitals’ IPL season feels like it aged considerably more than that.

Virat Kohli’s milestone amid the wreckage

While everything fell apart around the contest, Virat Kohli used the occasion to write his own entry into the permanent record books.

He needed eleven runs to become the first player in IPL history to reach 9,000, he got them at the ground where he learned his cricket, against the team that declined to pick him in 2008, in front of a crowd that was half his and half theirs and entirely aware that something historic was happening.

The milestone arrived quietly, this is Kohli, so the runs came without drama, without a dropped chance, without a moment of uncertainty and he finished unbeaten on 23 as RCB completed a nine-wicket win. The NRR implications were significant too. RCB’s win with 81 balls to spare pushed their net run rate to plus 1.101, cementing second place.

Delhi Capitals’ dropped to minus 0.184, leaving them seventh and staring at a playoff path that requires almost everything to go right from here.

What is actually wrong with Delhi Capitals and why it keeps happening

The 75 all out was not an accident, it was the logical conclusion of problems that have been building all season. The DC bowling unit’s confidence appears to have been broken by the Punjab Kings game, where they posted 264 and still conceded the highest chase in IPL history.

Conceding a world record has a way of doing that to a bowling group and with Lungi Ngidi already out with a head injury, the DC pace attack has been leaking runs at close to eleven an over at the death across the last three games.

The dc batting is no more settled. KL Rahul’s 152 against Punjab was one of the great IPL innings and then three days later the same top order recorded a powerplay score of thirteen for six, the lowest six-over score in IPL history. The swing between ultra-aggressive and completely unprepared is not a tactical approach. It is a symptom of a side that does not have a consistent batting identity.

Axar Patel admitted after the game that the team was surprised by the movement from Bhuvneshwar, which is a remarkable thing to admit about a bowler who has been taking wickets with swing in this format for fifteen years.

Without a settled bowling core or a consistent middle-order blueprint, Delhi are playing what can only be described as lottery cricket. Brilliant when everything lines up, historically bad the moment something tilts against them. The highest score ever against them, the lowest score ever for them, seventy-two hours apart. That is not bad luck. That is who they are right now.