Delhi Capitals conceded 78 runs in the last five overs in their heavy loss to Mumbai Indians.
Having packed their side with an additional overseas paceman, Daniel Sams (0/44), alongside Kagiso Rabada (0/42) and Anrich Nortje (1/50), DC would've hoped that the trio will be able to control most of the innings, especially with off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin (3/29) doing his job commendably.
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But they went for plenty as MI reached an intimidating total of 200/5 despite being 122/4 at the end of 15 overs. During the chase, DC collapsed to just 143/8 in response.
Ponting was left bitterly disappointed with the overall performance.
"It was mainly the execution through our first few overs, the first over went for 15-16, so you are on the back foot pretty much straight away there. We did fight our way back into the game," he said at the post-match press conference, as quoted by PTI.
"We crawled our way back, from sort of 7-14 (overs) were in our favour, they were only about 120/4, so we were hoping for 170 total, which might have been in our ballpark," he added.
MI's rampaging batsmen, Ishan Kishan (55*) and Hardik Pandya (37*), were too good for DC's death bowlers after Quinton de Kock (40) and Suryakumar Yadav (51) had once again set-up a nice foundation to their explosive act.
"Our execution in the last four to five overs was miles off where we needed it to be," stressed Ponting. "We continuously fed Hardik Pandya where he wants the ball, even Ishan Kishan kept getting away from us and he has played well in all the games we have played against MI, so far in this season."
“We felt that we had planned very well. Our meetings have been as clear and as concise as it has been throughout the tournament but under pressure our execution today was miles off."
“We have seen tonight with Hardik’s little cameo, we can see how the game can change if you don’t get it right or if you expose someone that hasn’t got appropriate skill to bowl in the death overs. So, look the way we managed the overs was right, just the execution let us down," he added.
Ponting was slightly lenient towards his batsmen as they were under pressure of the asking rate from ball one and then had to contend with Jasprit Bumrah (4/14) and Trent Boult (2/9) at their very best. 0/3 at one stage, DC could reach near the 150-mark only because of fighting efforts from Marcus Stoinis (65) and Akshar Patel (42).
"If you look at the dismissals, Prithvi (Shaw) looked like got a good ball. Ajinkya (Rahane) also got one that swung back nicely and the execution of Bumrah’s yorker to Shikhar (Dhawan) was absolutely first-class," said the former Australia captain.
“They executed better than us, as simple as that, right through the game with all aspects of the game, they were better than us and they outplayed us. Three wins they had over us so far in the tournament."
"We have a couple of days before our next challenge and we will wait and see who our opponents are going to be tomorrow. As a group, we have got to dig really deep and try and find ways to get better in a short period of time," he added.
DC will now take on the winner of Friday's (November 6) eliminator between Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) and Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in Qualifier 2 this Sunday in hope to set-up the summit clash with MI next Tuesday (November 10).