Piyush Chawla has given his verdict on Mayank Agarwal’s captaincy stint with Punjab Kings, saying the captaincy isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and it was clearly evident.
Mayank Agarwal, who was retained by Punjab Kings ahead of the 2022 mega auction and built the team around him, had a torrid time in the IPL 2022. While his personal form wasn’t great, he couldn’t lead the side to the playoffs either. Piyush Chawla reckoned the Punjab skipper let the pressure get to him.
Agarwal replaced KL Rahul as the captain of Punjab Kings in the IPL 2022, following his excellent season last year, where he scored 441 runs at an average of 40.1 and strike rate of 140.4. His numbers for this season, however, read 195 runs at 17.7 average and 125 strike rate.
The leg-spinner turned analyst, Chawla thinks the lack of captaincy experience for Agarwal at the domestic level also made a big difference. In an interaction with ESPNcricinfo, he said the pressure of leading the side was visible the way Mayank looked edgy on the field and while batting as well.
“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.”
The Kings could only win six out of their 13 matches so far, getting knocked out of the playoffs race. Their season was so inconsistent that they could not win two matches in a row even once.
Chawla added that not showing trust in their players didn’t work well for Punjab Kings. He was disappointed with their treatment of Shahrukh Khan in particular. He said dropping the hard-hitting Tamil Nadu batter after a few games was a wrong move, especially having spent big money on him in the auction.
Punjab Kings will play their final group fixture on May 22 against Sunrisers Hyderabad, where they have a chance to finish fifth on the points table.
