Delhi Capitals’ (DC) head coach, Ricky Ponting hopes to involve their regular skipper, Rishabh Pant in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023, while DC has already announced Australian batter, David Warner as the skipper for the 16th edition of IPL. While the 25-year-old is out of the season due to the serious injuries he sustained during a road accident in December last year.
Earlier, DC’s head coach of the IPL 16 recalls the Indian star player, by saying that in an ideal world, he would have wanted Pant to be in the dugout, but for him, we can have his shirt number in our caps and jersey for this season.
Ricky Ponting expressed that he will love to have Rishabh Pant in DC’s dugout-
“I have spoken to Rishabh a bit. We are hoping to get him involved this season,”
“I’d love to have him at all our home games. Having him in our dugout or our change room will be very special. However, David Warner will do a great job. He has been a successful franchise cricket captain in the past. He’s excited to lead the team as well,” said the former Australian skipper.
While, the left-handed batter, Pant is known for his aggressive style of batting and has found success for India, especially in Test Cricket scoring 2271 runs at an average of 43.67 with 5 centuries so far. The 25-year-old was the star of India’s victory in the Border Gavaskar Trophy 2021 in Australia. He also led the DC side in the IPL 2022 full season.
Grateful for small thing, big things and everything in between. ?#RP17 pic.twitter.com/NE9Do72Thr
— Rishabh Pant (@RishabhPant17) March 15, 2023
“I have spoken to Sourav about the players we’ve got, possible line-ups, possible keepers and things like that. He has always got some good things to say to the players during training. It was a lot of fun to work with him in 2019 and we won a lot of games,” he further added.
As Rishabh is unavailable for the season, Delhi based club has limited choice in the Wicketkeeping department on their side, in the auction they bagged English wicketkeeper, Phil Salt for INR 2 crore, but it will interesting to see if they will go with a regular keeper or with the part-time keeper, Sarfaraz Khan for the IPL 16.
“It’ll be harder on the players with much more travel in this IPL. But this is part and parcel of franchise cricket. I think more travelling makes the tournament more exciting. We’ll get to play in a lot of different venues and in front of many different groups of fans,” concluded Ponting.
The last three editions of IPL have been staged in different locations, the 2022 edition was held in Mumbai and Pune, the 2021 edition was first held in a few locations in India before moving to the UAE due to the Covid outburst, and the 2020 IPL was entirely held in the UAE.
Meanwhile, IPL 2023 will kick off on March 31, with the opening game between defending champions Gujarat Titans and Chennai Super Kings (CSK), while, DC will open their campaign against Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) at the Ekana Stadium in Lucknow on April 1.
Also read: IPL 2023: Rishabh Pant Is Special Player And You Won’t Get A Player Like Him Easily – Sourav Ganguly