Delhi Capitals (DC) opener Prithvi Shaw has had a terrible start to the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 season, registering scores of 12, 7, 0, 15, 0 and 13 in six matches.
As it turned out, the 23-year-old was eventually dropped from DC’s line-up for the match against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) on Monday (April 24).
Ahead of DC’s next fixture, head coach Ricky Ponting has admitted that a lot of openers in other IPL teams are playing better than Prithvi Shaw.
"I think it's 13 games (considering IPL 2022 as well) since Prithvi has made a 50 opening the batting for the Delhi capitals. 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," Ponting said ahead of the team's match against Sunrisers Hyderabad on Saturday (April 29).
Before being dropped, Shaw was used as an Impact Player in the last three games but he failed to replay the faith of the team management.
"Prithvi at his absolute best we know he's a match winner. That's one of the reasons that he's a retained player because we know if he bats a certain amount of balls, we win about 95% of the games," he said.
"But so far this season, he hasn't been able to produce. I think the six games that he played was just over 40-odd runs, so that's not what we require right now.
"So it is a tough decision to leave him out but hopefully the team that we put on the park tomorrow can go win another game for us."
"When he arrived this year, he'd been at the NCA for quite a few weeks working really hard on his fitness he turned up in good physical shape and his work ethic and training and everything in the nets suggested to me that this might be just that big year for him but that hasn't worked out just yet."
After Shaw’s exclusion, England's Phil Salt opened the innings for the Capitals but the move didn’t work for the team.
"We needed to try and find a bit of a spark at the top of the order and Phil Salt moved up there the last game but that didn't quite work as well," Ponting said.
The coach is hopeful that Prithvi Shaw can turn things around if he gets another chance going forward.
"But saying that there's a long way to go and 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 hopefully can finish the tournament off really strongly."
(With PTI Inputs)
