Two seasons in a row, Punjab Kings have undergone a leadership change and announced veteran opening batter Shikhar Dhawan as their new captain for the 2023 edition of the Indian Premier League. The opening batter will be replacing fellow Indian international Mayank Agarwal at the helm of affairs.
The development was confirmed by the franchise on Wednesday evening ahead of the looming retention and release process prior to the IPL 2023 auction in December. It is understood that the decision was taken at a PBKS board meeting and was backed by newly-appointed head coach Trevor Bayliss, reported ESPNcricinfo.
Dhawan joined the franchise ahead of the previous edition of the tournament and will be taking over Agarwal despite not finding the best of forms last year. The 36-year-old averaged 38.33 but carried a strike-rate of only 122.66, which was contrary to how PBKS had based themselves as a batting-heavy side for the competition.
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Punjab had another league-stage exit to show for their efforts, finishing sixth in the ten-team standing with seven wins out of their fourteen games. The pre-playoffs exit may have put Agarwal’s own struggles on the spot, as the Indian batter failed to replicate his success from the previous editions of the Premier League upon his captaincy ascent.
He was one of the two players PBKS had retained prior to the auction last year alongside young, promising speedster Arshdeep Singh. But the player collected only 196 runs from his 13 innings of the tournament. One good batting surfaces in Maharashtra, Agarwal mustered only one fifty-plus score and had a season strike-rate of just 122.50. The batter had an evident intent to keep pushing the accelerator mode but simply failed to withstand his own for once.
This was in contradiction to the previous three seasons, where Agarwal had stamped his authority and became an integral part of the side under KL Rahul’s captaincy after coming on board in 2018. From IPL 2019 to 2021, Agarwal blasted 1,1197 runs from his 36 innings at a strike-rate of 146.15 while retaining a healthy average of 34.20 in his role as the middle-order aggressor. Why, he was given the charge of the side after Rahul’s departure from the scene as PBKS’ first retention pick at INR 12 crores.
However, PBKS have had a quick change of mind on their own decision and backtracked from the idea of keeping Agarwal at the helm after just one season. To be fair to the franchise, though, they aren’t the only ones to have felt Agarwal needed to be relieved from captaincy. Last year, when the player was struggling for flow and consistency, multiple prominent names within Indian cricket suggested it wasn’t the brightest of ideas to appoint him the captain as he looked burdened by expectations from the outside.
Agarwal’s sacking from the top job has proven beneficiary for Dhawan, who may have felt wary of being ousted from the set-up after struggling throughout the campaign to play the anchor at a reasonably acceptable strike-rate. The franchise has appointed him leader of the pack even as he approaches the deeper side of his thirties and has been out of India’s T20I side for more than a year now.
Dhawan had joined PBKS from the auction at a sum of INR 8.25 crores after being one of the consistent performers for Delhi Capitals till the 2021 edition. The IPL 2020 was the left-hander’s best campaign to date in the tournament history: he scored a whopping 618 runs at a strike-rate of almost 144.73 to help Delhi reach the final in Dubai, where they lost to Mumbai Indians.
