Prithvi Shaw is still a match-winner, according to Ricky Ponting, but the Delhi Capitals opener had a long enough streak of poor performances to warrant being left out of the starting lineup, in Ponting’s opinion.
Prior to being benched for the Capitals’ most recent game against Sunrisers Hyderabad on April 24, Shaw had played the first six games of the season for the team, scoring 12, 7, 0, 15, 0 and 13.
Shaw’s streak of low scores for the Capitals went all the way into the second half of the 2022 campaign, according to Capitals coach Ponting.
In his last 12 IPL innings, the opener has now failed to reach the fifty-run mark. Rishabh Pant, Axar Patel, and Anrich Nortje were the other three players the franchise kept until the 2022 mega auction. Shaw was one of the four players.
“It just came to the point, where yes, it was six games this season, but I think it was six or seven games at the back end of last season as well,” Ponting said on the eve of Capitals’ return fixture against Sunrisers.
“I think it’s 13 to 12 games since Prithvi has made a fifty opening the batting for the Delhi Capitals, which, if you look throughout the tournament, there are a lot of other players at the top of the order with other teams that are playing a whole lot better than Prithvi.”
The Capitals benched Shaw for their most recent game against Sunrisers and elevated Phil Salt to open with David Warner. Salt was out for a first-ball duck after the move didn’t go as planned.
“We needed to find a bit of a spark at the top of the order, and Phil Salt moved there in the last game – that didn’t quite work as well,” Ponting said.
“So yeah, Prithvi, absolutely, at his absolute best we know he is a match-winner. That’s one of the reasons that he is a retained player here at the Delhi Capitals, because we know that if he bats a certain number of balls, we win about 95% of the games, but so far this season he hasn’t been able to produce.
“I think the six games that he played, it was just over 40-odd runs, averaging about 7 or 8, so that’s not what we require right now. So it was a tough decision to leave him out, but hopefully, the team that we put on the park tomorrow can win another game for us.”
Ricky Ponting was taken away by Shaw’s underwhelming performance in IPL 2023; he had thought at the outset of the season that Shaw was shaping up nicely from a physical and work-ethic standpoint to score substantially.
“It’s not difficult to have the conversation, because that’s what my job is,” Ponting said when asked about communicating the decision to drop Shaw.
“When guys are not performing, or even when they are performing, it’s my job to have good, honest, open, adult conversations with all the players, and nothing’s different with Prithvi. I talk the same way to him as I talk to any guys that are scoring runs.”
“But as it sort of worked out, when he arrived this year, he had been at the NCA [National Cricket Academy] for quite a few weeks, he had been working really hard on his fitness. He turned up in good physical shape, and his work ethic and training and everything he did in the nets suggested to me that this might be just that big year for him.
“I actually came out publicly and said it, on record, saying that I thought he would be one of our standout players for the tournament. That hasn’t worked out just yet, but saying that, there’s a long way to go.”
“If things don’t work out with our current top order, there’s no reason why he couldn’t be back in the team, and if he gets back in the team, then hopefully he can finish the tournament really strongly.”
“We know what sort of talent he is, everyone’s seen him play. It’s up to us, as a team, to find a way to get the best out of him.”