While several teams will feature new captains, two IPL franchises will have captains without any prior experience of IPL captaincy
The Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 is less than a week away from going live. Therefore, ahead of the tournament, it is crucial to look at data, statistics and stories to ensure that our readers, who are also hardcore cricket enthusiasts, are up to date with what’s happening on the ground.
As most fans are thoroughly aware, the upcoming season will feature several new captains. However, there are two teams and their two new captains who are entirely new to the job. In short, the two captains in question have never captained an IPL side in their careers. Therefore, it is essential to look at their stats and compare them with their predecessors.
For the first time since 2016, Delhi Capitals will take the field without their star man Rishabh Pant, who also served as the team’s captain. Having picked by Lucknow Super Giants, Delhi shocked the fans by selecting Axar Patel over KL Rahul.
It is understandable, though, given Patel was Delhi’s vice after Pant. In fact, last season, in the absence of Pant, Patel captained Delhi in one IPL match against Bengaluru, but Delhi lost the game by 47 runs.
Moving on to captaincy in other competitions, Patel has served as Gujarat’s captain in two first-class games, five List As and 16 T20s. In List As, his captaincy has been poor, winning only two matches out of seven. Fortunately, the T20 record has been better, with 10 wins in 16 games.
And with the ball? Well, given an all-rounder, Patel has decent stats with the bat as well as the ball. In 150 matches, he has scored 1,653 runs at an average of 21.47. Axar mostly comes down the middle order and often works as a finisher. With the ball, he has been impressive with 123 IPL wickets to his name, with a best figure of 4/21. However, an economy of nearly eight doesn’t look good in a fast-paced format like T20.
Compared to him, his predecessor Pant has 3,284 runs in 111 matches. As a captain in the IPL, he won 23 matches and lost 19.
After Royal Challengers Bengaluru did not retain Faf du Plessis, who was the team’s captain from 2022 till last season, the majority of the fans assumed that Virat Kohli would be handed over the captaincy again.
However, similar to Delhi, Bengaluru also shocked the fans by handing over the captaincy cap to Rajat Patidar. Patidar has been with the team since 2021, having played 27 matches for Bengaluru at a strike rate of 158.85. His highest individual score in the IPL stands at 112 not out, which came against the Lucknow Super Giants in the 2022 Eliminator.
While the IPL 2025 will be Patidar’s maiden captaincy in the tourney, he has fair experience of leading Madhya Pradesh in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy (SMAT) and the Vijay Hazare Trophy (VHT).
In 2024, he led his team to the finale of the SMAT but lost to Mumbai, and in VHT, Madhya Pradesh finished third in Group E, missing the quarter-final qualification by a whisker.
Across formats and tournaments, Patidar has captained 26 matches, out of which 16 were won, whereas seven matches were lost and two games ended in a draw.
His predecessor, Plessis, captained Bengaluru in 42 matches, winning 21 and losing 21. With the bat, Faf has 4,571 runs in 145 matches and will next be seen in the Delhi Capitals jersey as its vice-captain to Axar Patel.
For both Patel and Patidar, the upcoming season will be a challenge, given that Delhi and Bengaluru have never lifted the IPL trophy since the tourney’s inauguration in 2008. If one of them lifts the title, they will write history, given that both teams have had legendary captains in the past but have never managed to touch the trophy.
