NEW DELHI — Physio Craig Anthony de Weymarn had one job. He jogged onto the field during a tense Indian Premier League match, ducked under the helmet visor of Delhi Capitals’ hard-hitting finisher Ashutosh Sharma, and prepared to run through the standard head-injury questions. He never got to ask a single one.
Ashutosh, fresh from taking a blow to the helmet while batting, looked at the physio and opened with a statement that had nothing to do with cricket, dressing rooms, or medical science. “Yes bro, I am virgin,” the young batter announced, apparently apropos of nothing.
Delhi Capitals captain Axar Patel, speaking on the Humans of Bombay YouTube channel, said Craig came back to the dugout still laughing. “Craig couldn’t ask anything after that. Both of them just laughed and the physio returned,” Axar told the interviewer. He offered the story as a window into something the scorecard never shows — the specific texture of Ashutosh Sharma’s personality. “He is an extremely funny man, he could do anything.”
The formal protocol Craig had come out to conduct is not trivial. Under ICC guidelines, a player struck on the helmet must pass a concussion assessment before returning to bat or bowl. That test typically involves baseline orientation questions — identifying the ground, the date, the match situation — designed to rule out cognitive disruption from impact. Ashutosh’s declaration, whatever its provenance, was not on any approved diagnostic tool.
What makes the anecdote more than a locker-room punchline is what it says about how Ashutosh operates under pressure. The blow to the helmet is a moment that stops a match, brings out the physio, and focuses an entire stadium’s attention on one player. For most cricketers, that attention is unwelcome. Ashutosh, 23, apparently treats it as material.
Axar has spoken often about the unusual chemistry inside Delhi’s dressing room, but this story, told with the easy familiarity of someone retelling something that still makes him laugh, captures something the highlight reels do not. Ashutosh, who has earned a reputation across the IPL 2026 season as one of the most explosive finishers in the game, is apparently just as likely to floor you off the field.
The Delhi Capitals finished sixth in IPL 2026, missing the playoffs for the second consecutive year. That context sits uncomfortably alongside the warmth of Axar’s storytelling. Under his captaincy, the franchise won the Champions Trophy in style and yet could not find consistent form in the IPL. KL Rahul crossed 500 runs for the season, but the innings around him lacked the acceleration the format demands. Mitchell Starc’s absence during the early rounds of the tournament left the pace attack understaffed at precisely the moments powerplay wickets matter most. Kuldeep Yadav endured one of the more forgettable IPL campaigns of his career. Lungi Ngidi, excellent through the middle overs, could not carry the bowling unit alone.
Axar himself has been candid about the results, even if the interviews have occasionally surfaced the lighter moments. As the BCCI continues reshaping the landscape around the IPL, DC faces decisions about squad balance that go beyond any single season’s underperformance. Reports of a potential overhaul ahead of the next retention cycle have circulated since the league stage ended.
What remains unresolved is whether back-to-back playoff misses will cost Axar the captaincy, or whether the franchise views his leadership as a long-term project still finding its footing. He is the longest-serving player in the DC setup, having joined in 2019, and the trust between him and the ownership has so far survived a difficult pair of seasons. His statistical contribution with bat and ball has not declined. Whether that is sufficient when the team’s results have not improved is a question Delhi’s management will need to answer before the next auction cycle, not Axar himself.
Craig de Weymarn, for his part, presumably adds the Ashutosh encounter to a long career of field assessments gone sideways. None of the standard protocols account for an unprompted declaration of celibacy, but that, Axar suggested, is precisely the point. Some cricketers go quiet under pressure. Others, apparently, go surreal.
