On Thursday, Delhi Capitals announced that Pant will continue as the captain in IPL 2021 – but former India cricketer Aakash Chopra is not pleased with the decision.
Delhi Capitals were faced with a major conundrum ahead of the re-start of Indian Premier League 2021 in the UAE. DC wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant was appointed as the captain of the team during the first phase of IPL 2021 as Shreyas Iyer had suffered an injury that ruled him out of the tournament.
But then tournament was suspended due to rising number of Covid cases in its bio-bubble, and the remainder of the league was scheduled to restart from September 19th in the UAE.
In the interim, Shreyas Iyer has regained fitness and has returned with the franchise and will be a part of DC in the remainder of IPL 2021. The dilemma for DC was to stick with Pant, who had led the team to the top spot before the tournament was suspended, or give captaincy back to Iyer.
On Thursday, DC announced that Pant will continue as the captain in IPL 2021 – but former India cricketer Aakash Chopra is not pleased with the decision.
“Rishabh Pant is the captain. It’s OK but personally I didn’t like that decision. You decide on one captain, appoint him, he stays with you for 2-3 years, takes the team to the final, he gets injured, you bring in a stand-in captain and then you say let’s stay with the stand-in; ‘Because he’s doing well in international cricket, Shreyas, you can wait’,” he said in a video uploaded on his Youtube channel.
“Ideally that’s not the right thing to do but it is what it is,” Chopra added.
He further said that he believes it will be an easy task for DC to reach the top four in the season because they would only need to win two more games to do so.
“In their last IPL in the UAE, they were brilliant. They were one of the first teams to qualify. Yes, they lost to MI four times but reached the finals which was their best season. Can they get better than that? They just have to win two matches and they’ll qualify so there’s no doubt this team will reach the final four,” he signed off.