Chawla felt that his batting was affected largely due to the captaincy pressure.
India cricketer Piyush Chawla feels Mayank Agarwal didn’t do great as the captain of the Punjab Kings in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL). After having to let go of KL Rahul, the franchise appointed Mayank as their skipper who looked like a pale shadow of himself, especially with the bat.
Agarwal had scored 441 runs at an average of 40.09 last season as a player. But this season, the numbers came down to 195 and 17.71. Chawla felt that captaincy affected Agarwal’s batting clearly and also stated that leading a team ‘isn’t everyone’s cup of tea’.
With one game to go, PBKS have already been knocked out of the playoffs race. They will face SRH on Sunday (May 22) who also suffered a similar fate in IPL 2022. Piyush Chawla also pointed out Agarwal hadn’t led in domestic cricket and for India A as well and that PBKS franchise showed a lot of trust in him.
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“The way he performed [last year] they (Punjab Kings) showed a lot of trust in him, retained him too but he couldn’t stand true to it. I don’t think he had much prior experience of captaincy whether in domestic cricket or with India ‘A’ and that was visible here. The pressure of captaincy is different and it was clearly visible in his batting as well as how he used to look a bit edgy on the field. Captaincy isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and it showed clearly here,” he said while speaking to ESPNCricinfo.
Chawla also came down hard at the PBKS team management for dropping Shahrukh Khan only after the first few matches. They had bought him back in the mega auction but left him out of the playing XI after a few failures.
“You showed so much trust in Shahrukh Khan [in the auction]. His domestic season had gone so well. But you dropped him after just a few games. The kind of batter he should have got more chances. His batting spot is very difficult and you can’t expect him to win every game from there,” Chawla further added.
With playoff hopes diminishing, PBKS will now hope to end the season on a high by winning their last game against SRH on Sunday (May 22).
