NEWS
Follow UsWith only two games from five matches, Delhi Capitals are tottering at the eighth position on the points table, primarily because their unit haven’t clicked in the fashion they would have liked. While David Warner and Prithvi Shaw provided stability at the top, the rest of the pack failed to keep up, which resulted in another loss at the hands of Royal Challengers Bangalore, who on the back of the heroics from Dinesh Karthik and Josh Hazlewood, secured their fourth win in six games.
Delhi Capitals’ Head Coach Ricky Ponting was honest in his assessment and stated that his team haven’t done anything extraordinary to deserve a higher position on the points table.
“Our current standing is probably a fair assessment of how we played in the last three games,” Ponting said in the post-match press conference. “We hadn’t had a full-strength batting order to compliment till today. Mitch Marsh was playing his first game of the season today and didn’t quite fit the tempo of the game right away.
“Rovman Powell in the middle order hasn’t fired well so far. But we know what we are capable of. We don’t need to fix a lot of things. Half-way through the run-chase, we were pretty comfortably placed. One or two guys fired tonight, we could have won the game tonight.”
Prithvi Shaw and David Warner have notched up a couple of half-centuries each but fell immediately after getting to the milestone. Ponting feels the top-order players need to take bigger challenges in order to give the side a better base to capitalize on later.
“We want the guys to make the best of the opportunity and put up a big score. Especially if you are batting in the top four, you got the best opportunity to make big scores. I think 61 or 62 might be our highest score, Prithvi has been batting exceptionally well. He has got a couple of 60s while David has got a couple of scores like that as well. And trust me, it is something I talk about all the time. I know what the stats say. If you are one of the top players and go on to put up a score of 80+, success happens faster. And that hasn’t happened for us this season.
“In Davy’s defense today, there was so much pressure building from the other end. And a lot of that pressure came on him and he got forced to do something he wouldn’t do otherwise. There are definitely some rooms for improvement - with the bat and with the ball. We got to get better in all aspects of the game,” the Australian added.
Ponting, though, was pretty impressed with Kuldeep Yadav's performance so far in the tournament, saying the left-arm spinner is thriving in the DC environment.
"Kuldeep seems to be thriving in the environment that we are creating around him. I was very keen going into the auction to bring Kuldeep to Delhi Capitals. He wasn't able to get the opportunities with KKR last season that he probably felt he should have got.
"Only 3-4 years ago, he was one of the leading spinners in IPL and was playing for his country, so all the skill and talent was there we just needed build some fences around and make him feel at home and give him confidence and back his skills," he said.
