Lucknow: Delhi Capitals will expect a more productive effort from their openers when they visit the 'City of Nawabs' to face an increasingly confident Lucknow Super Giants in an IPL match here on Tuesday.The Capitals' opening has been a bit of roulette so far this season with Faf du Plessis, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Abhishek Porel and the latest entrant Karun Nair coming in at the pole position.In fact, in the last five matches they had three different opening combinations between those four batters, producing partnerships of 23, 34 0, 9, 0.It also had to do with the injury of Du Plessis, and the South African's fitness will be closely watched ahead of this match.Thus far, it looked like a minor glitch because the Capitals have won five of their seven matches and the middle-order under the aegis of KL Rahul too worked like a well-oiled machine.But Lucknow's competent bowling unit of Digvesh Rathi, Ravi Bishnoi, Avesh Khan and Shardul Thakur, though he is a bit expensive, has choked the opposition without much fanfare.The way Avesh excelled in the 18th and 20th over against Rajasthan Royals in LSG's two-run win is an example of that.It might have also doubled the confidence of the Super Giants that they can pull off wins from any situation.Therefore, the Capitals will not like to leave the task of building the innings to Rahul and his middle-order colleagues as they have been doing so often this time.Instead, the DC management will like to see their middle-order driving in the early advantage given to them by the top two.In contrast, the Lucknow outfit has a solid top three with Mitchell Marsh, Nicholas Pooran and Aiden Markram firing more often than not and it has given them an edge over opponents in the Power Play phase.Travails of skippers Pant, AxarIt's ironic that the personal form of DC and LSG skippers is going in exactly the opposite direction of their teams' fortunes.Both DC and LSG have 10 points and a win will keep them safely perched in the higher echelons of the points table ahead of the jostlers.But the lukewarm form of skipper Rishabh Pant has been a massive issue for LSG. He has merely 106 runs from eight games and 63 of those came in a single match. His strike-rate of 98 is also a tad worrisome.Against Delhi, Pant will have to deal with an excellent bowling unit comprising Mitchell Starc, Kuldeep Yadav, Vipraj Nigam and Mukesh Kumar.But much like LSG, the Delhi side too will have some concerns about their skipper -- Axar Patel.Axar has led well and made 140 runs at a strike-rate of 159, but those improvements have masked his diminishing returns as a bowler -- just a solitary wicket from seven matches at an economy of 9.36.It seems that the added responsibility of captaining the side and the demands batting higher up in the order have forced Axar to neglect his primary skills.The DC management might want him to address this disparity at the earliest so that they can have more variety in their attack.Head-to-head record Both Lucknow and Delhi clashed head-to-head on six occasions, with each side securing three wins each. In their most recent encounter in Visakhapatnam, DC won the thriller by one wicket. Even in 2024, two league stage matches were won by Delhi.Winning ProbabilityThe Pitch at the Ekana Stadium is a balanced one (traditionally) with support to batter and bowlers. However, it has favored exclusively batters this season.While both teams have a good batting line-up, Delhi Capitals unit looks more composed. Their bowling however, is a concern, who failed to defend a target of more than 200-runs in the last match. But with Starc and Kuldeep, the bowling unit looks strong and have delivered in earlier games. With that being said DC would be the favorites in today's match.Teams (from):Lucknow Super Giants: Rishabh Pant (wk/captain), Aiden Markram, Mitchell Marsh, Nicholas Pooran, Ayush Badoni, Abdul Samad, David Miller, Shardul Thakur, Avesh Khan, Akash Deep, Digvesh Singh Rathi, Ravi Bishnoi, Prince Yadav, Shahbaz Ahmed, Matthew Breetzke, Himmat Singh, Shamar Joseph, Manimaran Siddharth, Aryan Juyal, RS Hangargekar, Yuvraj Chaudhary, Akash Maharaj Singh, Mayank Yadav, Arshin Kulkarni.Delhi Capitals: Axar Patel (c), Jake Fraser-McGurk, Abishek Porel, Karun Nair, KL Rahul(w), Tristan Stubbs, Ashutosh Sharma, Vipraj Nigam, Mitchell Starc, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohit Sharma, Mukesh Kumar, Sameer Rizvi, Darshan Nalkande, Donovan Ferreira, Tripurana Vijay, Dushmantha Chameera, Faf du Plessis, T Natarajan, Ajay Jadav Mandal, Manvanth Kumar L, Madhav Tiwari.Match starts at 7.30 pm.