‘I don’t want to ruin the atmosphere’, says Axar Patel while speaking about the mid season captaincy opportunity of DC

Indian Premier League 2023 is set to move on to the next phase as three teams will join Gujarat Titans in the Playoffs. However, the first team to get eliminated from the 16th season of the Indian Premier League is the Delhi Capitals. The team failed to perform under pressure in the absence of regular skipper Rishabh Pant. In his absence, David Warner failed to get the best performance out of his team and they got eliminated from the tournament.

However, speaking about the captaincy star India allrounder Axar Patel made a shocking remark by saying that he would have rejected the offer of captaincy if it was handed midway through the season. “Mai chaalu series mey kisi ko kuch nahi bolta (I don’t say much during the mid-season). Agar mere pass captaincy aati bhi toh mai leta nahi (even if they had given me the captaincy, I would not have accepted it.)”, he said while speaking with Indian Express.

“When your team is going through such a bad season, these kinds of things make it worse. You need to back your players, your captain and if you will change captaincy in the middle of the season it doesn’t send a good message. Things could have remained the same even if I was the captain. We failed collectively as a team, and you can’t blame the captain)”, he further added.

Axar Patel had a great season with Delhi Capitals

He further said, “I never had a chat about captaincy, but if I became a captain, then I would not take responsibility in the middle of a season. I don’t want to ruin the atmosphere of the dressing room.” Notably, In the ongoing tournament, Axar had a brilliant season as he scored 268 runs in 14 innings at an average of 29.78 with a strike rate of 137.43. He also clinched 12 wickets in the tournament becoming second best bowler for the Delhi Capitals.

In the last league game on Saturday, Delhi Capitals hosted Chennai Super Kings at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi. While batting first, CSK posted a massive total of 223/3 in 20 overs. Openers Ruturaj Gaikwad and Devon Conway added 141 runs for the first wicket. Ruturaj, in his innings, scored 79 runs off 50 balls, while Conway added 87 runs off 52 balls.