Delhi Capitals skipper Axar Patel suffered a hand injury and had to leave the field during Tuesday night’s home game against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). Although he managed to bat later, Axar was clearly uncomfortable throughout his 43-run knock off just 23 balls in DC’s chase for 205.

Axar Commented:

"I dragged my palm across the wicket. So my skin peeled off. Whenever I tried to hit the ball and the handle brushed, I felt a lot of pain but the good thing is we have a three-four day break. Then we play SRH. It would be great if it gets alright by then." 

The injury happened in the 18th over when Axar was fielding at midwicket. He dived full-length to stop a shot by Rovman Powell off Vipraj Nigam’s bowling and immediately seemed to be in pain. He left the field shortly thereafter and was attended to by DC’s head physio, Patrick Farhat.

It was the mighty vice-captain, Faf du Plessis who led the team for the last 2.2 overs. Thus, KKR ended with a huge score of 204 for 9 at the Arun Jaitley Stadium. Axar also displayed tremendous bowling prowess, ending up with figures of 2 for 27 in his four overs, dismissing Ajinkya Rahane lbw and Venkatesh Iyer caught at cover.

More treatment was given during the innings break to Axar as his hand was heavily taped. He winced with pain practicing shadow drives, showing evident trouble gripping the bat. He came out to bat at No. 5, but still managed to bat while mostly playing with his bottom hand after contact. Yet he and du Plessis added a most important 76-run partnership off 42 balls for the fourth wicket.

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Axar has already incurred an injury to his left hand index finger coming into the IPL 2025. This injury was caused by the Champions Trophy. At the beginning of this season, he had been restricted from bowling much because the skin was not fully healed, but he has managed to bowl the "complete overs" of bowling over the DC's last three matches as well.

Delhi Capitals, under the leadership of Axar Patel in his first full season as captain, were fourth in the points table with six wins in ten matches. Their next match is against the Sunrisers Hyderabad on 5th May.