Delhi Capitals coach Ricky Ponting said the team needs to do some “soul searching” after his side succumbed to a third straight loss in the Indian Premier League on Saturday.
DC are ninth in the points table with three losses in three games after losing to table-toppers Rajasthan Royals by 57 runs. Chasing 200 to win in 20 overs, DC could only score 142/9 with only three batters getting to double figures.
Speaking after the match, Ponting said that team has been good in training but admitted to being puzzled as to why the hard work wasn’t translating to results on the pitch.
“We are a long way off right now. I can’t put my finger on why because I watch these boys train and prepare. Their work has been really good. It just hasn’t come across on the field,” Ponting said in the post-match press conference.
“If I could put my finger on it, I’d do something about it and change it. We need to do a bit more soul-searching as a group and talk about it. Maybe not tonight, I might let the guys have a think of it. We may address it the next day, but we need to turn our cricket around pretty quickly. Three games in and no wins, you can’t get afford to get off to bad starts in the IPL,” he added.
Ponting also pointed out that the first couple of overs in the bowling and batting innings effectively cost his side the match.
“In the first two games, we sort of got to none for 40 early on and then lost wickets in the back part of the powerplay. Today was completely different. We were two down in the first over and you let your back to the wall from there,” Ponting said.
“You look at that aspect of our game, you look at our first two overs with the ball, they were none for 32 of two over with eight fours and nothing else, it says our execution with the ball was way below what it needs to be. So, if you look at the first two overs of our bowling innings and first over of our batting innings, you put those together and it’s very hard to win games of cricket,” he added.
Prithvi Shaw’s form has been a cause for concern for Delhi with the 23-year-old getting dismissed for a four-ball duck on Saturday. The Mumbai-born batter has only managed to score 19 runs this season and was dismissed trying to go after Trent Boult.
“I’m not sure it’s the pace. I don’t think Trent Boult’s pace today worried him. The moving ball probably worried him today,” Ponting said of Shaw.
“If any of you guys were at training yesterday and watched him bat, he looked like a million dollars. So, his preparation was great. It’s probably something we need to think about. He’s now got a poor record against left-armers, which I think every opposition would know, it’s something that we need to work on with him. But as I said we’re not going to point fingers at one person, we don’t do that at Delhi Capitals. We’re all in this together and have to play better as a group of 11-12 to get the results we’re after,” he said.
Delhi have changed their starting XI in every match with Ponting admitting that the team needs to decide on a starting XI soon to revive their season.
“We’ve changed our playing XI every game. We’ve probably had three changes every game. Some of them have been forced, some haven’t. We have to have a think about the players we’re putting on the ground because what we’ve done so far hasn’t worked out. So as a coaching group, we’ll talk about that with the captain and hopefully we can get it right for the next game,” he said.
Ponting also agreed that probably promoting Rovman Powell up the order might have been a good ploy.
Delhi will next face fellow strugglers Mumbai Indians on March 11 in New Delhi.
Quotes courtesy: ESPNCricinfo