The Delhi Capitals on Monday named former South Africa skipper Faf du Plessis as vice captain of the franchise ahead of the Indian Premier League 2025.

Du Plessis, who had earlier led the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) till the end of IPL 2024, was released by the franchise ahead of the mega auction last year, and was subsequently acquired by DC for his base price of Rs 2 crore. He was preferred for the vice-captain’s role ahead of KL Rahul, another former IPL captain before his arrival in DC this year.

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40-year-old Du Plessis has been part of the IPL since 2012 when he picked by Chennai Super Kings (CSK), and continued his association till the end of the 2015 season, before moving to Rising Pune Supergiant for two seasons when CSK were banned from the IPL, and went back to CSK, staying there till 2021.

During the 2022 auction, RCB bought him and, with Virat Kohli stepping down as the team’s captain ahead of that season, the South African was handed captaincy of the team. He led them for three seasons, and while RCB reached the playoffs in both 2022 and 2024, they are yet to win the trophy.

du Plessis, who has 4571 runs from 145 matches at an average of 35.99 and a strike rate of 136.37 will now be a part of the leadership group at DC, another team yet to lay their hands on the silverware, is a part of the team’s strategy to end their title jinx.

The DC has made wholesale changes to their entire set-up, starting with head coach Ricky Ponting, who moved to Punjab Kings after parting ways with the Capitals. With Hemang Badani as the new head coach, Matthew Mott as assistant coach, Kevin Pietersen as team mentor, and Munaf Patel, Venugopal Rao and Vijay Bharadwaj, the team also recently named Axar as the new skipper.

Axar, who was one of the four players retained by the franchise (along with Tristan Stubbs, Abishek Porel and Kuldeep Yadav) from the past season, was elevated after Rishabh Pant, their captain till the previous season, went back into the auction and was subsequently picked up by Lucknow Super Giants (LSG), where he was named captain. Rahul led LSG till last season.