Karun Nair and Axar Patel (BCCI/IPL Photo)
New Delhi: Delhi Capitals captain Axar Patel criticized his players after their costly lapses led to defeat, despite the team scoring 264/2 in 20 overs. Karun Nair dropped Shreyas Iyer twice in the same over over Kuldeep Yadav, which was the turning point in Delhi Capitals’ loss.Iyer, who survived those chances, went on to score an unbeaten 71 off 36 balls, guiding Punjab Kings to a six-wicket win with seven balls to spare as they chase a daunting target of 265 runs on Saturday.
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Incidentally, the previous highest successful run chase in T20s as well as IPL history also belongs to Punjab Kings, who chased down 262 against Kolkata Knight Riders in 2024.“Looking at that kind of wicket, if you don’t support the bowlers and keep giving too many chances, I feel we deserve to lose.
That is the main point,” a dejected Axar said in his post-match presentation.Earlier, Delhi Capitals capitalized on KL Rahul’s batting-filled 152 – the third highest individual score in the IPL – while Nitish Rana added 91 to take the home team to 264/2.In reply, Prabhsimran Singh (76) and Priyansh Arya (73) made a brilliant start, stitching 126 runs in just 42 balls to lay the foundation for the chase.“It was a good pitch and a small pitch, so it was always possible to hit sixes.
However, when opportunities arise and you don’t seize even one, you miss opportunities, as we did today. On a wicket like this, if you don’t support the bowlers, it becomes difficult. At the same time, we also need to look at our bowling unit. The way we played the power play, the fast bowlers, the fielding, and the chances we missed were the main reasons.
Because on a wicket like this, 264 was a very good score. If you look at the positives, we scored 264 goals, which is a record score in the Indian Super League.
“It shows that if luck goes your way a little bit and you get what you have, you can win two or three matches in a row,” Axar said.“If you look at the games we lose, many of them were close. That’s what I said in the draw as well, if we can seize the decisive moments, we can go our way with two or three results and we can keep winning. But the key is that you have to seize those moments. It can’t keep happening, where you come every time and repeat the same mistakes. So I think we will go back and review it again and see what we can do and where we can improve,” he added.The Punjab Kings team has not lost this season, and leads the points table with 13 points from seven matches.