Delhi Capitals had a fine time while facing Mumbai Indians at Wankhede. Rishabh Pant did the trick with the bat while Shikhar Dhawan and Colin Ingram also joined the party. But, unfortunately, that wasn’t the case against Chennai Super Kings. In between, the head coach Ricky Ponting makes his voice on the loss against CSK.
Ricky Ponting felt that they can’t expect Rishabh Pant play that Wankhede-like innings on every day. He believes that it is impossible to play like that for any batsman. Meanwhile, he wants Colin Ingram and Shreyas Iyer also to step up.
I am disappointed with the back-end batting – Ricky Ponting
The head coach is pretty happy with the way things went in the first 15 overs. Delhi Capitals scored 118 runs for the loss of 2 wickets in 15 overs. But, all they managed was 147 runs on the board at the end of the innings.
“There’s a certain role that we want Shikhar to play in this team. Even by his own admission, he would’ve liked to score quicker today but at the 15th over mark, we were 118 for 2. We struggled to get to 147 so it’s the back-end of the innings that I am sort of most disappointed in because I think we set up the front part of the innings pretty well,” Ponting said.
Ponting is disappointed with the finishing touches to the innings. He felt that South African Colin Ingram, Shikhar Dhawan and the skipper Shreyas Iyer got the good chance to boost the total despite the wicket of Rishabh Pant.
“No, we can’t expect Rishabh to play as he did in Mumbai, every day. No one can do that, No one can go and get 78 off 20-odd balls in every game. But it was there for that to happen today. It wasn’t just Rishabh, (Colin) Ingram had an opportunity as well. Shreyas (Iyer) had a good opportunity again today,” he explained.
We want Shikhar Dhawan to score quicker:
Shikhar Dhawan played an anchor role in his last two innings for Delhi. He hasn’t taken any risks instead played a run-a-ball knock during his stay at the crease. Ponting wants Dhawan to score a bit quickly.
“…in an ideal world, yes, we’d want Shikhar to score quicker but it was difficult. He’d hurt his ankle while batting as well so his usual running between the wickets was a little bit hampered tonight,” Ponting cited the senior opener’s niggle as one of the reasons for his slow batting.
Well, as Ricky Ponting said, other batsmen need to step up to the occasion. Currently, they are placed second on the table and will take on Kolkata Knight Riders at Feroz Shah Kotla in their next assignment.