Punjab Kings have delivered a statement on the recent reports of Mayank Agarwal to be sacked as captain ahead of the next season of the Indian Premier League. While the next season of the IPL is still a good number of months away, rumours have started doing the rounds regarding changes in Punjab Kings’ setup after yet another dismal display in the tournament.

Before the start of IPL 2022, Punjab Kings had named Mayank Agarwal as their captain after KL Rahul left the franchise for Lucknow Super Giants. The change in captaincy, however, did not change Punjab’s fortunes as they failed to do well once again. With 7 wins and as many losses, the Punjab-based outfit finished at the 6th spot and failed to make it to the playoffs.

And the burden of captaincy had a bad effect on Mayank Agarwal’s batting too. After scoring more than 400 runs in each of the previous two seasons, the right-handed batsman could score only 196 runs this year. He scored his runs at a poor average of 16 and a strike-rate of 122. And with Punjab enduring yet another poor season, a recent report suggested that the franchise was likely to remove Mayank Agarwal as the captain. InsideSport recently quoted a Punjab Kings official as saying:

“No Mayank is not in plans to lead. He will need to focus on batting. He will be a crucial player for us. As for Anil, we are discussing a few options, but nothing has materialized yet. We have time left. We will take a call at the right time.”

Punjab Kings delivers statement on Mayank Agarwal:

With the rumours doing the rounds, Punjab Kings, on Wednesday (August 24), took to their social media handles to refute them. The franchise not only refuted the claims but also said that no team official has made any claims regarding the captaincy.

“News reports published by a certain sports News website pertaining to the captaincy of the Punjab Kings franchise has been making the rounds in the last few days. We would like to state that no official of the team has issued any statement on the same,” read the statement.