New Delhi: Delhi Capitals captain Akshar Patel They won the toss and elected to bat first against table toppers Punjab Kings in the IPL 2026 clash at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi on Saturday. DC are currently sixth in the points table, and Axar admitted at the toss that the team has been making avoidable mistakes in the tournament.Both sides went into the field with unchanged XIs – Delhi Capitals from their previous game, and also Punjab Kings, who are top of the table with five wins from six matches.“We’ll bat first. It looks a bit dry and obviously it’s a one-day game, and you know it’s quite hot as well. So we’re trying to put up a good total first and then defend it. (Do you think it’ll slow down a bit later?) Yeah, it looks like it’s going to slow down a bit later, and that might help some bowlers. So we want to post a good total first and give the bowlers a chance to use any help from the wicket. We want to focus on ourselves,” Aksar said during the toss.“Every team we’re playing is playing good cricket, we’re playing good cricket, but the thing is, in the important moments, I think we’re not winning those moments in the game, we’re making silly mistakes, and if we correct them, I think we’ll get back on track, and if we fix the little mistakes we’re making on or off the field, I think most of the time it’s going to be the side that decides to win. We are playing the same team,” he said.Captain of Punjab Kings Shreyas IyerWho also named an unchanged XI, said: “It’s important to live in the moment, you want to make the atmosphere like that. I personally feel you just have to keep training hard and keep improving all the time, better than the last performance. And that’s what I keep telling my colleagues.”“We need to inculcate the right habits in the dressing room and the culture that we’ve been building so far. And it’s been, Touchwood, going great. We’ve just got to keep enjoying the game and having fun with each other. I’d love to bowl. And thankfully, I had a little chat with Axar before the toss. He said he was going to bat, so I was happy we were going to bowl. We are going with the same team,” said Iyer.Teams:Punjab Kings (Playing XI): Prabhasmaran Singh (W), Priyansh Arya, Cooper Connolly, Shreyas Iyer (C), Shashank Singh, Marcus Stoinis, Marco Johnson, Xavier Bartlett, Vijay Kumar Veshak, Arsdeep Singh, Yuzvinder Chahal.Delhi Capitals (Playing XI): KL Rahul (W), Patham Nissanka, Sameer Rizvi, Axar Patel (C), Nitish Rana, Tristan Stubbs, David Miller, Lungi Ngidi, Kuldeep Yadav, T Natarajan, Mukesh KumarEffect Subs:Delhi Capitals: Vipraj Nigam, Karuna Nair, Dushmantha Chamera, Ashutosh Sharma, Aqib Nabi DarPunjab Kings: Nihal Vadhira, Harpreet Brar, Suryanesh Shedge, Yash Thakur, Vishnu Vinod
