IPL 2026: Axar Patel wins the toss; DC to bowl first against RR

Axar Patel (File Pic)

Axar Patel won the toss and elected to bowl first against the Rajasthan Royals at Arun Jaitley Stadium, Delhi.

After winning the toss, Axar Patel was happy to bowl first. The DC skipper would hope that his team can get the win to boost their playoff aspirations.

"We would like to bowl. Obviously when you win, you feel good, and the atmosphere is positive too. Even when we were losing, the atmosphere was still good, it's not like we were pointing fingers at anyone. But when you come after winning, you carry that confidence forward as well. There is only one change. Looking at the nature of the pitch, unfortunately Auqib Nabi misses out, and instead Vijay Tripurana is making his debut. As they say, what happens on the field stays on the field, and off the field life stays off the field. When you leave the ground, you should leave it there, stay happy, enjoy yourself, maintaining that is very important." Axar Patel said.

Riyan Parag admitted that he would have liked to bowl first, too. RR are currently 5th in the table with 12 points.

"Happy to be back first. I was pretty unsure about the wicket as well. It looks like it's dry, but then we've seen the past scores and results here, chasing has been better, though it also tends to slow down a bit later on. So I was a little confused, but happy to bowl first because of that. We've had some ups and downs in the last few games. I think we haven't defended totals very well. But today gives us another opportunity to do that and hopefully get it right. So we've gone with an extra seamer today and hopefully we can defend the total better. Jaddu is out because of workload management and all of that, and Ravi Singh comes in for us." Parag said.

Confirmed playing XI for both teams:

Rajasthan Royals (Playing XI): Yashasvi Jaiswal, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Dhruv Jurel(w), Riyan Parag(c), Ravi Singh, Donovan Ferreira, Shubham Dubey, Jofra Archer, Adam Milne, Brijesh Sharma, Yash Raj Punja

Delhi Capitals (Playing XI): KL Rahul(w), Abishek Porel, Sahil Parakh, Tristan Stubbs, David Miller, Axar Patel(c), Madhav Tiwari, Tripurana Vijay, Lungi Ngidi, Mitchell Starc, Mukesh Kumar