Delhi Capitals (DC) head coach Ricky Ponting has opened up on his struggle to bring the best out of Prithvi Shaw, who is touted as the next batting superstar of Indian cricket.
During the last year’s IPL in UAE, Shaw struggled badly as he made only 228 runs from 13 innings at an average of 17.53 with two half-centuries.
The right-hander is coming into the upcoming Indian Premier League on the back of a record-breaking Vijay Hazare Trophy season (827 runs in 8 innings) and Ponting wants him to continue his good run for the Capitals.
“I've tried (taking Shaw under his wing) the last two years and I've really enjoyed working with him. I've had some really interesting chats with him through last year's IPL, just trying to break him down, trying to find out exactly what was the right way to coach him and how I was going to get the best out of him,” Ponting told cricket.com.au in an exclusive chat.
“But he had an interesting theory on his batting last year – when he's not scoring runs, he won't bat, and when he is scoring runs, he wants to keep batting all the time.
“He had four or five games where he made under 10 and I'm telling him, 'We have to go to the nets and work out (what's wrong)', and he looked me in the eye and said, 'No, I'm not batting today'. I couldn't really work that out,” he added.
"He might have changed. I know he's done a lot of work over the last few months, that theory that he had might have changed, and hopefully it has, because if we can get the best out of him, he could be a superstar player," he continued.
After the IPL 2020, Shaw travelled to Australia with the Indian team but lost his place following the first Test in Adelaide, owing to low scores of 0 and 4. His technique was found out against the in-swinging deliveries and he was eventually dropped from the squad for the four-Test series against England at home.
In fact, Ponting had rightfully predicted the chink in Shaw’s armour the ball before he was cleaned up by Mitchell Starc in India’s first innings at Adelaide.
"I was going pretty hard at him," Ponting remarked. "I was basically telling him, 'Mate you've got to get in the nets. Whatever you think you're working on, is not working for you'."
"It's my job as a coach to challenge someone's preparation if they're not getting results. So I challenged him and he stuck to his word and he didn't practice much at all towards the back-end of the tournament, and didn't get many runs towards the back-end of the tournament either."
Delhi Capitals will open their IPL 2021 campaign against Chennai Super Kings on April 10 in Mumbai.
