Delhi Capitals Should Relieve Shreyas Iyer And Appoint Ravichandran Ashwin As Captain: Sanjay Manjrekar

One of the major USPs of Delhi Capitals has been the concentration of youth in their set-up with the likes of Prithvi Shaw, Rishabh Pant, and skipper Shreyas Iyer forming a young Indian core in the batting department but former Indian cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar feels that the youthful exuberance was the sides’ only weakness in the 2020 edition.

Delhi Capitals performed brilliantly in the 2020 IPL as they broke their jinx of having never qualified for the summit clash of the cash-rich league since its inception. But barring Shreyas Iyer, who scored more than 500 runs, none of their big-ticket young players in Prithvi Shaw and Rishabh Pant- barring the final- turned up the heat this year.

Shreyas Iyer, however, led the team brilliantly with both bat as well as a leader, but Manjrekar feels that the Delhi Capitals should relieve the talented batsman from the leadership role and make Ravichandran Ashwin the captain.

Manjrekar feels that relieving Iyer from the high-profile role will help him blossom as a batsman besides adding that Ravichandran Ashwin thanks to tactical acumen and loads of experience will be a great choice.

”The only weakness that the losing finalists Delhi Capitals had was their concentration of youth, led by a youthful, inexperienced T20 captain. Shreyas Iyer got the captaincy out of chance when Gautam Gambhir resigned his captaincy and he has done a fantastic job. But now they must relieve him of the role and get him to blossom more as a batsman,” Sanjay Manjrekar wrote in his column for Hindustan Times.

”Who better than Ravi Ashwin in that role instead? This again is one of those off-field decisions that could dictate the long-term fortunes of an IPL team,” he added.

For the uninitiated, Ravichandran Ashwin led his former franchise Kings XI Punjab in the 2018 and 2019 editions and on both occasions, he failed to lead his side to the playoffs. Ashwin was traded to the Delhi Capitals ahead of the 2020 season and he was absolutely brilliant with the ball throughout the campaign.

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