Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: Delhi Capitals captain Axar Patel won the toss and opted to bat first against table-toppers Punjab Kings in their IPL 2026 clash at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi on Saturday. DC are currently sixth on the points table, and Axar admitted at the toss that the team has been making avoidable mistakes in the tournament.Both sides went in with unchanged XIs – Delhi Capitals from their previous game, and Punjab Kings as well, who sit at the top of the table with five wins from six matches.“We will bat first. It looks a bit dry and obviously it’s a day game, and you know it’s quite hot as well. So we’re thinking of putting up a good total first and then trying to defend it. (Do you think it will get quite slow later on?) Yes, from the looks of it, it seems like it will slow down a bit later, and the bowlers might get some help as well. So we want to post a good total first and give the bowlers a chance to make use of any assistance from the wicket. We want to focus on ourselves,” Axar said during the toss.“Every team we are playing is playing good cricket. We have also been playing good cricket, but the thing is that in crucial moments, I think we are not winning those moments in the game. We are making silly mistakes, and if we correct those, I think we will be back on track. If consistency comes in, and if we fix the small mistakes we are making in the field or in taking decisions at crucial times, then I think we will be on the winning side most of the time. We are playing the same team,” he said.Punjab Kings captain Shreyas Iyer, who also named an unchanged XI, said: “It’s important to stay in the moment, that’s how you want the environment to be. I personally feel you just have to keep training harder and keep getting better every now and then, better than the previous performance. And that’s what I keep telling my teammates as well.”“We need to inculcate right habits in the dressing room and culture that we’ve been building so far. And it has been, touch wood, going great. We just have to keep enjoying the game and have fun along with each other. I would love to bowl. And thankfully, I had a small discussion with Axar before the toss. He said that he’s going to bat, so I was happy that we are going to bowl and the toss was inconsequential. We are going with the same team,” Iyer said.Teams:Punjab Kings (Playing XI): Prabhsimran Singh (w), Priyansh Arya, Cooper Connolly, Shreyas Iyer (c), Shashank Singh, Marcus Stoinis, Marco Jansen, Xavier Bartlett, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Arshdeep Singh, Yuzvendra ChahalDelhi Capitals (Playing XI): KL Rahul (w), Pathum Nissanka, Sameer Rizvi, Axar Patel (c), Nitish Rana, Tristan Stubbs, David Miller, Lungi Ngidi, Kuldeep Yadav, T Natarajan, Mukesh KumarImpact Subs:Delhi Capitals: Vipraj Nigam, Karun Nair, Dushmantha Chameera, Ashutosh Sharma, Auqib Nabi DarPunjab Kings: Nehal Wadhera, Harpreet Brar, Suryansh Shedge, Yash Thakur, Vishnu Vinod
