New Delhi: Delhi Capitals captain Axar Patel criticized his fielders after their costly errors led to the defeat, despite the team posting a massive 264/2 in 20 overs. Dropped by Karun Nair. Shreyas Iyer Kuldeep Yadav twice in the same over, a turning point in Delhi Capitals’ loss.Iyer, who survived those chances, scored an unbeaten 71 off 36 balls to guide the Punjab Kings to a six-wicket victory with seven balls to spare as they chased down a tough target of 265 runs.
Incidentally, the most successful run chase in T20 as well as IPL history is also held by Punjab Kings, who chased 262 against Kolkata Knight Riders in 2024.“Given the type of wicket, if you don’t support your bowlers and keep giving a lot of chances, I think we deserved to lose. This is the important point,” said a dejected Axar in the post-match presentation.Earlier he was with Delhi Capitals. KL RahulA stroke-rich 152 – the third-highest individual score in the IPL – while Nitish Rana added 91 to take the hosts to 264/2.In reply, Prabhasmaran Singh (76) and Priyansh Arya (73) provided a brilliant opening with a 126 off just 42 balls to lay the foundation for the chase.“It was a good pitch and a small ground, so there were always sixes. However, when opportunities arise and you don’t take one, you drop the chances, like we did today, on a wicket like this, if you don’t back your bowlers, it becomes difficult. Also, we have to look at our bowling unit. The way we bowled, missed opportunities to bowl fast, the way we bowled on the powerplay field, fast. Missed bowling opportunities”. Reasons Because 264 was a very good score on such a wicket. If you look at the positives, we scored 264 runs, which is a record score in the Indian Premier League. It shows that if luck favors you and you take your catches, you can win two or three matches in a row,” said Axar.“If you look at the matches we’ve been losing, there were a lot of close games, I said the same in the toss, if we had seized the important moments, two or three results could have gone our way and we could have gone on to win, but the important thing is that you have to take advantage of those moments. You can’t come every time and repeat the same mistakes again. We think what mistakes we review, we think again. We can improve,” he said. added.Punjab Kings are unbeaten this season and top the points table with 13 points from seven matches.
