Ricky Ponting, the head coach of the Delhi Capitals, was not about to let his team off the hook following their humiliating 106-run loss to the Kolkata Knight Riders.
Delhi Capitals (DC) head coach Ricky Ponting expressed his embarrassment with his team’s first-half performance and how they gave up too many runs while bowling slowly after their 106-run defeat to Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in an Indian Premier League (IPL) match. In the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024, Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) are now playing Delhi Capitals at the ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium in Visakhapatnam. On Wednesday, KKR gave an outstanding performance in every aspect of the game.
Ponting stated, “I was almost embarrassed with our first half of the game today – to concede that many runs,” at the post-match press conference after the game. We were two overs behind again since it took us two hours to bowl our overs. As a result, the guys bowling the final two overs will only be able to do so with four fielders outside the circle.”
The former Australian captain continued, “There are a lot of things that happened in this game that are unacceptable; we have to fix [them] immediately to go forward in this tournament.”
Ponting stated that KKR never let up during the match.
“They had a great start on the powerplay. After six overs, they were up to about ninety runs. It’s not the best part of the game because if it occurs in the beginning, you’re always trying to figure out how to get back in, which they didn’t let us do today. They didn’t let up. We need to be quite hard on ourselves,” Ponting stated.
While batting, DC captain Pant called for a physiotherapist during the game, despite scoring two half-centuries in a row. Ponting stated that he was moving fairly well when hitting and speculated that it might have just been fatigue.
“I witnessed him yelling at a physio. It could have just been a small amount of fatigue. When he batted, it appeared that he was moving fairly smoothly. I believe that we ought to focus solely on his batting performance tonight. After he confronted the physio, I saw absolutely no signs of hobbling in him. There may be a slight cramp because I saw him stretching a little,” the head coach of DC stated.
Although Pant needs to attack in order to regain his confidence, the coach expressed his satisfaction with the way the player bats.
“I’m happy with what he did with the bat. Undoubtedly, he needed that kind of situation—where he had to strike right away—in order to regain some confidence. It’s fantastic that he has now had two successful at-bat games,” Ponting remarked.
When discussing how skipper Rishabh failed to take a DRS against Sunil Narine during KKR’s batting innings, Ponting stated, “Narine was missed, and then later on, Shreyas Iyer was missed.” I have no idea what transpired there. It was clear that Rishabh had missed them. On both occasions, there was genuine sound heard by other fielders and bowlers on the ground,” he continued.
