Harbhajan Singh feels this star player’s form was the “Most Shocking” thing for him in Indian T20 League 2022
Harbhajan Singh (Image Source: Twitter)
The Indian T20 League 2022 saw the rise of a bunch of youngsters. On the other hand, some of the reputed names failed to leave an impact on the tournament. The tournament saw a new winner in to form of the debutants in the tournament, Gujarat.
While Gujarat was clinical and consistent about their business in the tournament, a team that failed to show consistency was Punjab. Punjab released their captain of the last season, KL Rahul, and handed over the responsibilities to Mayank Agarwal. Under Agarwal’s leadership, Punjab managed to win 7 matches in the tournament and finished at the 6th place in the points table with 14 points under their belt. While Punjab looked off-colors, Mayank Agarwal himself looked totally out of touch with the bat in hand.
In the 13 matches that Agrawal batted, he scored just 196 runs at an average of 16.33. He just had one 50+ plus score to his name in the entire tournament. The Indian T20 League 2022 turned out to be one of the worst seasons for Agarwal.
Harbhajan Singh, the former Indian off-spinner recently evaluated Agrawal’s performance and tried to find out what went wrong for the batter. In a conversation with Sportskeeda Cricket, Harbhajan said- “If we talk about Mayank, I felt that ‘What has happened to him?’ He is such a good player. After getting captaincy, I think he was mentally under pressure. From opening he went down to No.4. The team was being led from the outside. He is just taking everything. He seemed suffocated. He should have been given freedom. He has been under the radar and surely that could have been a little better.”
This answer from Harbhajan was when he asked to pick the ‘Most Shocking Moment’ of the Indian T20 League 2022.
Earlier another former Indian spinner Piyush Chawla also spoke about Punjab and Agarwal’s performance. He felt that the responsibilities of captaincy weighed down Agarwal, the batter and hence he failed to perform.
“The way he performed, they showed a lot of trust in him, retained him too but he couldn’t stand true to it. I don’t think he had much prior experience of captaincy whether in domestic cricket or with India ‘A’ and that was visible there. The pressure of captaincy is different and it was clearly visible in his batting as well as how he used to look a bit edgy on the field. Captaincy isn’t for everyone and it showed clearly here,”- Piyush Chawla said during a conversation with ESPNcricinfo.
