Axar Patel had a serious discussion with Rishabh Pant after Delhi Capitals' abysmal season last year: 'Can even start…'
Last season under Rishabh Pant’s captaincy, Delhi Capitals endured a poor campaign, finishing sixth with 14 points.
IPL 2024 saw T20 cricket reach new highs with high-scoring totals. IPL 2025 saw Sunrisers Hyderabad continue their form from last season in their opener vs Rajasthan Royals, and it is expected to be like that for this season too.
Last season, SRH got the highest team total of 287 and were close to breaking it, as they reached 286 vs RR.
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Delhi Capitals are set to open their IPL 2025 campaign on Monday, taking on Lucknow Super Giants in Visakhapatnam. Speaking ahead of the match, DC’s new skipper Axar Patel said, “Nowadays cricket has changed a lot.”
“Mostly IPL is more about batsman's game, fours and sixes. So we have to evolve as a team. At the end of the day, I don't want to complicate things. As captain I told the group that cricket is a game, keep it simple. A good yorker is a good yorker ball and if your execution is good, then you will be fine. So I am not telling them too much that you should go for this and that. I am just asking them to keep it simple, that's my strategy throughout the tournament.”
‘We have to change’: Axar Patel
Last season under Pant’s captaincy, DC had a poor campaign, finishing in sixth place with 14 points. Pant took over as DC captain in 2021, and he has been highly unsuccessful in that role.
Opening on what he learned from Pant’s last season as DC skipper, Axar said, “We learnt from the last season, I said that cricket has evolved too much. From the last season we learned that you have to be ahead of the game. You can't be chasing the game. It's not like in the powerplay we have to swing the ball or we have to bowl length balls. We can even start from two-three slower balls. So it's not any particular plan for any batsman. We have to change the plan according to the situation which I learned from the last season.”
Pant’s departure also saw DC get a like-for-like replacement in KL Rahul, who was LSG skipper previously. Meanwhile, Pant moved to LSG in the IPL auction in Jeddah.
