Axar Patel reveals why he wouldn’t have accepted Delhi Capitals’ captaincy mid season amidst franchise’ poor run in IPL 2023

Delhi Capitals (DC) have ended their IPL 2023 with a loss against Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in their last league match of the season at the Arun Jaitley Stadium. DC had a disappointing season as they won only five out of their 14 league matches. It looked like DC missed their regular skipper Rishabh Pant throughout the season, as he is in recovery mode after suffering a car accident in December 2022.

In Pant’s absence, Australia’s David Warner was appointed as the skipper of DC in the ongoing season. Warner has a good record as a skipper in IPL and also won a trophy while leading Sunrisers Hyderabad in 2016. However, this year, things didn’t go as planned for Warner and his team as they finished in the ninth position on the points table.

After that, many fans opine that Axar Patel should have been given the captaincy instead of Warner for the ongoing season. Axar was appointed as the vice-captain of DC in IPl 2023. The 29-year-old also had a great outing as he scored 268 runs in 14 matches, at an average of 29.78 and a strike rate of 137.43. With this, Axar is also the second wicket-taker for DC this season with 12 scalps in nine matches and has also bagged a four-wicket haul this season.

These kinds of things make it worse: Axar Patel

The Indian all-rounder spoke about DC’s poor performance in IPL 2023 and also said that he would not have accepted the captaincy if it was offered to him mid-season. He believes that these types of things could ruin a team’s environment when they are not having a good 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.). 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 middle of the season it doesn’t send a good message,” Axar told Indian Express.

“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)”, he further added.