Axar in focus as hopefuls slog it out at training before DC-MI tie in sweltering conditions
NEW DELHI: Usually, halfway through an IPL season, the training sessions get shorter with several players opting to focus on recovery. With the summer sun getting stronger, one would have expected the same ahead of Saturday’s match between Delhi Capitals and Mumbai Indians here at the Arun Jaitley stadium.
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Instead, the bulk of the MI team went through a gruelling session on Thursday afternoon while the Capitals camp also set up an intense session on Friday evening.
This is a time when each IPL performance counts, with the selection for the upcoming T20 World Cup due soon. At a time when Indian cricket seems to be grappling with workload-management issues, one could see Hardik Pandya going full throttle with the ball in high heat and Axar Patel turning up for a lengthy nets session barely 40 hours after playing a tough match against Gujarat Titans.
Capitals captain Rishabh Pant, too, was present overseeing his troops. Rohit Sharma, on Thursday, had a long and nuanced batting session. And Ishan Kishan, hoping to resurrect his international career after a fallout with BCCI, decided to push the limits by batting for nearly two hours at the practice area before moving on to the centre square to sharpen his range hitting skills.

The two teams are delicately placed in the table. Capitals have a chance to push the top four and MI are clearly staring down a cliff. Stakes are always high for players in the IPL. But the pressure is more this time as the next few weeks may prove to be critical for many careers.
One player who must be eager to seal his T20 World Cup spot at the earliest is Axar Patel. Forever in the shadow of Ravindra Jadeja, Axar has been selected and dropped from World Cup squads quite a few times.
Capitals’ director of cricket Sourav Ganguly asserted on Friday, “Axar, Rishabh are certainties for me for the World Cup. I’m sure someone like Rohit, the way cricket is going these days, would want someone coming at No. 8 to bat and give him those 15-20 runs, which Axar can easily do. And if he needs someone to go in the middle and hit spinners, Axar can do that too. That’s the advantage with Jadeja and Axar.”

Axar’s promotion in the batting order to No. 3 paid off immediately for Capitals in the last match as he scored a valuable 66 runs. And the economy rate with his brand of left-arm spin has been hovering around seven runs per over in a tournament which has seen 200 become the par score.
There’s another facet to Saturday’s match that adds to the context, as MI’s power-hitter Tim David pointed out. An afternoon match is closest to the conditions one may expect at the T20 World Cup in the Caribbean.
“We’ve got a day game in Delhi and it’s 38 degrees. It can be similar sort of conditions in the Caribbean and day matches there, it’s pretty warm. It’s hard to speculate on what the pitch will be like in a month’s time. They could do a lot of work and make real flat pitches. It could rain the day of the game and would spin,” David said.
The IPL is tantalisingly poised. But the heat is on the players to make a case for World Cup selection.