IPL 2018 | Our Indian talent has been outstanding, says Delhi coach Ricky Ponting

IPL 2018 | Our Indian talent has been outstanding, says Delhi coach Ricky Ponting

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Keeping an eye on the next season, Ricky Ponting has insisted that they have a good number of exciting young Indian talents to turn things around. The newly appointed Delhi coach has also talked about Rishabh Pant’s brilliant batting show and Glenn Maxwell’s terrible form with the willow.

Numbers are not speaking it right for Delhi Daredevils this season - winning 5 of 14 league matches. However, after the captaincy huddle, one can say that Delhi has played some exciting brand of cricket and especially the Indian young talents in the team are phenomenal. This is the only reason why their coach Ricky Ponting is taking a lot of positives going forward to the next season despite finishing as the wooden spooners.

Having some young Indian players in their setup, Delhi featured the likes of Rishabh Pant, Shreyas Iyer, Prithvi Shaw, and Avesh Khan regularly in the squad. Giving his insights on the performance of them, Ponting felt that the Indian talents were outstanding and that they were not to be blamed for not finishing higher on the table.

"I actually do [in response to the scouts who picked the aforementioned Indian youngsters]," asserted Ponting. "If you look through some of the youngsters that we have played this year, you have to say some of the guys you have seen - Prithvi , Abhishek , Sandeep - you got to say they are some of the most exciting players that have actually taken part ever, Avesh Khan is another one. We have got a lot of very highly talented youngsters and if you look at the results of our Indian players through this tournament, we can't blame them at all,” said the legendary cricketer at the post-match presser, as reported by Cricbuzz.

“Our Indian talent has been outstanding and I think the Indian batsmen have contributed probably all bar about 400 runs that we have made in the entire tournament. We can't complain there. Our scouting was very good," he added.

Talking specifically about Rishabh Pant, Ponting praised him highly for having an outstanding season. Pant is currently leading the race for the Orange Cap with 684 runs at an average of 52.62, which included a hundred and five fifties. Ponting optimistically said that he can win the Orange Cap but was unhappy about the fact that rest of the batsmen apart from Shreyas Iyer couldn't chip in, which would've resulted in them challenging for the title. 

"It has been an outstanding season for him, obviously wearing the Orange Cap right now. It would be nice if he was able to retain that for the remaining games but as we know Kane Williamson is breathing down his throat. It is great recognition for the personal season that Rishabh has had,” described Ponting. 

“Across the board, we needed a more even contribution - from a few more of our top-order batsmen if we were going to be a threat to challenge for the title this year. Shreyas had a really good season, probably over 400 runs, he can hold his head up high but we just didn't get enough consistency from our batting group to be up there with the leading teams in the tournament,” he observed.

When the question was asked on Glenn Maxwell - being given a long rope despite him having a poor tournament, Ponting looked clueless about the answer and replied that he really don’t know what happened with "the Big show". The former Australian player also noted that they were taking every game as a final which resulted in sticking to a match-winner like Maxwell.

"I wish I knew. I have spent a long time with Maxwell over the years, was only a few weeks before this tournament came around, I spent the triangular series with him with the Australian team. Did a lot of work with him there, he was actually Man of the Series in that tournament coming over here. He was coming here in good form and having played a little bit of T20 cricket. When we went to the auction table, we sort of picked our group of players. I must admit before the first game I had Glenn Maxwell penciled in as our No. 4 batsman for the tournament,” reckoned the two time world-cup winning captain.

"He has had a disappointing IPL this season. Even though we couldn't qualify, we were taking every game as it was a final. We wanted to put the team on the park that we felt was going to give us the best chance of winning the game. If you look through the overseas batsmen we have, we all felt that Glenn Maxwell was going to be the best chance of being a match-winner for us, so we stuck with him," he concluded.

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