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'It hurts me because I know how good a player he is': Shastri argues PBKS captaincy cost Mayank 'place in Indian side'
Former India head coach Ravi Shastri also argued that captaincy pressure in IPL could be one of the possible reasons for Maynak Agarwal not finding a spot in India's red or white-ball squad, which was announced on Sunday.
Despite assembling one of the most formidable squad, Punjab Kings (PBKS) had a disappointing outing in the ongoing edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL). The team collected 14 points from the same number of matches as they won seven and lost the other seven. (IPL 2022 full coverage)
One of the biggest reason for their downfall was big guns failing to fire and few heavyweight performing good but in patches. One among them who failed to live up to his reputation was PBKS skipper Mayank Agarwal, who had a below average season.
Batting at a poor average of 16.33, the 31-year-old could only accumulate 196 runs from 12 innings and former India coach Ravi Shastri believes the added responsibility of leading the unit took a toll on his performance.
The former coach also argued that it could be one of the possible reasons for him not finding a spot in India's red or white-ball squad, which was announced on Sunday.
"Mayank Agarwal is in the same boat as Ravindra Jadeja," noted Shastri on ESPNcricinfo's analysis show T20 Time Out.
"Guys who have never captained sides, you ask them to captain franchises. This is no disrespect to Mayank. Because I love the kid. I know how he plays his cricket, how determined he is. But it's putting a guy who is very good at what he does in a wrong place. And it can have problems. Serious problems. Serious repercussions. It could have cost him his place in the Indian side. Test side, everything, because the selectors will judge on current form, they will judge on what they actually see.
"So it hurts me because I know how good a player he is. But obviously the pressures of captaincy will weigh on anybody's mind. You saw Jadeja turning out to be a different cricketer. Mayank Agarwal turned out to be a different cricketer. We know how good they are as individual cricketers. In future this is a strong message to the franchise to be very smart about who you pick as captain," he added.
