Rishabh Pant’s on-field decision as Delhi Capitals captain in the IPL has come under the scanner of former players while DC’s head coach fully backed the wicket-keeper batters by saying “it’s easy to make a judgment from outside”.
Rishabh Pant’s on-field decision as Delhi Capitals skipper in the IPL might have come under the scanner of former players but the wicket-keeper batter has got the “full backing” of head coach Ricky Ponting, who says “it’s easy to make a judgment from outside”.
Under his leadership, Delhi Capitals have won five out of the 11 games they have played so far.
Pant’s bowling decision and changing of bowlers at the crucial moment of the matches have been criticized by many former Indian players like Virender Sehwag.
Ricky Ponting, the former Australian skipper, and Mumbai Indian captain said he fully backs every decision pants takes on the field.
“I fully back every decision he (Pant) takes on the field. I being a T20 captain before, I know you don’t have a lot of time to think about, especially under extreme pressure,”
Ponting said at the post-match press conference after DC’s 91-run loss to CSK.
“It is easy to make judgments from outside but trust me when you are in the middle it is not an easy thing to do.”
Elaborating on the decision-making process of a captain, the legendary batter said,
“A captain makes decisions in a very short time and the decision he takes he thinks is the best for the team at that given time of the match.
“He takes things like boundary size and batsmen at the crease into account when he makes those decisions.”
He, however, admitted that his side fared poorly in all departments of the game in the loss against CSK.
“Our bowling was not up to the mark, similarly our batting was very very poor. There were not many positives to take from the match. The only positive was Khaleel Ahmed, he was outstanding with the ball again,”
Ponting said.
“To lose by 91 runs, will put a huge dent in our net run rate. It means we need to bounce back strongly in our next game.”
Ponting said DC can still make the playoffs with wins in all the remaining three matches.
“We would think we can make the playoffs with three wins. Eight wins might be enough to get in and one big win might help our net run rate. Who knows we can be in the final.
“That is what we can think of, what happened has happened and we would want to look to the future and look for a rebound from a bad performance.”
“That’s not an excuse for us. It’s not the first time that we’ve had to deal with it on game day. In one of the earlier games against Punjab Kings we had to deal with the same thing and ended up winning that game comfortably,” he said.
“We are going to make excuses and we are going to find solutions for the problems we are facing. Although it wasn’t ideal preparation, we should have played better cricket. At the end of the day, we let ourselves down.”