Ricky Ponting, the Delhi Daredevils head coach, has come out and expressed that despite his team's disappointing season, where they have finished last, He is very happy with the way Indian talent has shaped up and performed for DD.
Prithvi Shaw, Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant, Vijay Shankar, Harshal Patel, Avesh Khan, Abhisekh Sharma, have all done an outstanding job said, Ponting.
He was recently quoted saying as, “We can’t blame the Indian players, they have been outstanding, we can’t complain, Prithvi Shaw, Sandeep are some of the talented players we have and I hope they will have a long and successful IPL career here with us.”
Rishabh Pant scored a mammoth 684 across 14 matches at an excellent strike rate for Delhi. Ponting all praise for him, said, “It’s been an outstanding season for him (Pant). Obviously, he is wearing the orange cap right now and it would be great if he can manage to retain the orange cap by the end of season"
“It is great personal recognition for his season but if we had an even contribution from a few more of the top order we could have been a threat. Shreyas Iyer had a very good season but there was not enough consistency for our batting group to be up there with the leading teams,”
Gautam Gambhir resigned mid-way through the season as the captain for Delhi, citing his personal form which was extremely poor. Ricky Ponting talked about this issue and said, “Gautam’s stepping down didn’t have any negative impact on our team. It probably came as a shock to the players and me. It was a courageous decision, you don’t see such a decision every day"
“It gave the opportunity to Prithvi Shaw to play and Shreyas stepping up for the captaincy. It was a daunting thing to do to captain and I think he handled the challenge well. He is a tremendous young guy and I won’t be surprised if I see more leadership role for him in future.”
Ponting also said nobody is more disappointed with Glenn Maxwell than the player himself for not being able to contribute like the way it was expected for Delhi Daredevils. He said, “I wish I knew(the reasons for his failure). I have spent a long time with Glenn over the years. A few weeks before this tournament, I did a lot of work with him, I spent time with him at the Australian team. He was man of the series there and was in good form"
“I think the thing that held him was the wish to play well. He missed the first game due to Aaron Finch’s wedding. When he came back into the side, he was batting at number 5, he didn’t play all that much in that position and he was frustrated that he didn't have an impact on the result for his team.”
He further elaborated, “He is outstanding but he had a disappointing IPL this season. We did stick with him because every game for us, even though we didn’t qualify, we were taking as a final and we wanted to put the team on a path that would give us best chance of winning and if you analyse the overseas batsmen Glenn Maxwell was going to be the best chance of a match winner for us. Even tonight, opening the batting for us and we knew he would have to bowl a few overs also. So we persisted with him.”
