Watch: Nitish Rana’s ‘notebook celebration’ triggers ugly spat with Digvesh Rathi in DPL 2025 Eliminator

Tempers flared at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Friday during the Eliminator match between West Delhi Lions and South Delhi Superstarz as Nitish Rana and Digvesh Rathi exchanged a few words, and the altercation threatened to even become violent at one point.

The issue started when Rathi stopped his bowling action while Rana was about to play a sweep shot, a trick that he had also employed while playing for the Lucknow Super Giants in the IPL.

The left-handed batter, however, wasn’t pleased with Rathi’s shenanigans and decided to give the bowler a taste of his own medicine. In the very next ball, Rana walked away from the stumps and told Rathi “Chal dalta reh chal (Keep bowling).”

Rana then went on to reverse-sweep Rathi the next ball, which went over the boundary line for a six. The left-handed batter then brought out Rathi’s trademark notebook celebration on his bat, which saw a few words being traded by the bowler.

Rathi’s words seemed to have pissed off Rana, who quickly charged towards the bowler with an aggressive body language. However, South Delhi Superstarz players were able to separate the two players, and eventually the matter ended there.

Notably, Rathi’s notebook celebration had got him in trouble on multiple occasions in the IPL for breaching the tournament’s Code of Conduct.

The leg spinner was fined and given demerit points for his celebration, and was ultimately penalized 50% of his match fee and faced a one-match ban after a heated exchange with Sunrisers Hyderabad batter Abhishek Sharma.

Nitish Rana leads West Delhi Lions over the line:

West Delhi Lions skipper Rana had the final laugh on Friday as he played an unbeaten knock of 134 runs off 55 balls to take the side past the target of 202 runs, with 7 wickets in hand and in just 17.1 overs.

Meanwhile, Rathi had a dreadful outing during the match, with his two overs leaking 39 runs and the bowler remaining wicketless in his spell.

Prior to the standoff between Rana and Rathi, there was another heated moment between Sumit Mathur and Krish Yadav during the match. During the incident, Rana had turned peacemaker as he took Sumit away from the action and calmed down the tempers.