If Ricky Ponting can come to the media conference and speak candidly on Delhi Capitals’ dismal performance, one can well imagine how tough he would get in the post-match team meeting.
Following the host’s five-wicket loss to Sunrisers Hyderabad on Thursday, the Delhi head coach took a hard look at the reasons of the team’s poor batting performance, for the second match in succession.
“We all have to play better. It’s as simple as that. As a coach, I can’t accept a performance like that tonight. For a batting group as good as ours, to be able to get a 129, that’s not acceptable as far as I’m concerned, as a coach. Our players have to accept that and we’ve got to find ways to get better next time.
“I thought they (Sunrisers) bowled smartly on that wicket. I think it’s fair to say that that wicket surprised us a lot. Talking to the groundsman before that game, he expected it to be the best pitch out of the three wickets so far. By far and away, it was the worst. You saw how little it bounced and how slow it was.”
Reflecting on the poor shot selection of the host, Ponting said, “No doubt. Even right from the start; I don’t think Prithvi Shaw played a great shot, considering how low the ball was bouncing. To try to hit across the line early on wasn’t a great shot.
“Some of our senior players probably didn’t bat long enough into the innings as well, to let us post a total that was going to be defendable. I mean, 130 was sort of short of what we were expecting.”
Looking at the positives, the Aussie said, “To be honest, I thought we did a really good job to drag the game out as much as we did. I thought the fight-back, pretty much from the end of the PowerPlay till the end of the game, was the way I expect our team to play. If we can take any positives from it, it will have to be the last 14 or 15 overs of our bowling innings.”
Ponting praised Man-of-the-Match Sunrisers’ Jonny Bairstow for his approach. “I think Jonny is obviously in red-hot form at the moment, coming off a hundred. When you’re confident like that, you don’t think about the negative result. Running down the wicket, he’s not even thinking that he going to lose the ball; he is thinking he’ll hit it out of the middle and hit it for six. That’s the difference between being confident and not being that confident.”
