While everyone is excited to captain a national side or franchise, Axar Patel revealed that he would not have accepted the Delhi Capitals captaincy if they had offered it during the middle of the season. With David Warner being the captain of DC in Rishabh Pant’s absence in the IPL 2023 season, DC lost five games on the bounce. Follow IPL 2023 Live Updates with InsideSport.IN.
Talks about change in captaincy might have crossed DC management’s mind, with Axar being the vice-captain. However, the southpaw made it clear taking captaincy in the middle of the season might have disrupted the team environment.
“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),” Axar said to Indian Express.
IPL 2023: ‘Team environment gets disrupted’ Axar Patel on why he would have not accepted captaincy during the middle of the tournament
DC coach Ricky Ponting had given captaincy to Rohit Sharma in 2013 when he was captain of Mumbai Indians. Rohit went on to win that season and never looked back. However, Axar has a different take on the matter since he feels taking captaincy during the middle of the season will disrupt team environment and does not give a good message.
“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.”
“Mere captaincy lene se sab kuch change nahi ho jata. Aisa nahi tha ki ek banda kharab kar raha tha. Usme captain kya kar sakta hai (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).”
IPL 2023: IPL 2023: Axar Patel shines bright for DC, lone bright spot for the team
Speaking about Axar, the southpaw has been the lone bright spot for DC in an otherwise dismal campaign for them. The all-rounder has scored 268 runs and picked up 11 wickets in 13 games. DC are out of contention for playoffs and play their last game against CSK on Saturday.
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