Daredevils mentor Rahul Dravid : We didn't bat intelligently

Delhi suffered a 10-wicket defeat as Punjab won with 73 balls to spare. "Really disappointing... I don't know... there's not much to say," Dravid said. "We were really poor and we didn't bat particularly intelligently on that kind of wicket. We didn't assess the conditions well enough and we didn't give ourselves a chance."

The veteran praised pacer Sandeep Sharma who used the slow strip intelligently to dismantle the Delhi batting line-up.

"Normally you see Sandeep swings the ball a lot but I think he quickly figured the wicket was slightly on the slower side and so he bowled wicket to wicket and hit the right lengths," Dravid said. "I think the key for him really was the length. That sort of forced our batsmen to play some shots and we hit the ball in the air a lot which was not a wise thing to do so much on a slow wicket.

"It was going to be a defining week for us. It hasn't started particularly well. Hopefully, we can go to Delhi and turn it around."

Delhi's batting lacks big names and features youngsters in the top order.

"But they've been playing the IPL for a while now. Most of them have shown glimpses of good performances in this tournament and in the past as well. So, really, it's going to be up to us and then themselves to lift ourselves up after this and really go out and try and play good cricket and not think too far ahead, try and focus on the next game and put in, definitely, a much better performance," Dravid said. 

The team was also criticised for appointing Karun Nair as skipper in place of injured Zaheer Khan.

"Obviously last year's vice-captain JP isn't here and Quinton [de Kock] isn't here as well, so we had decided that Karun would be the person who would take over the captaincy and we stuck with that.There are times when people are going to run out of form. Whether you're the captain or vice-captain sometimes you run out of form. It happens. That's not a reflection on his captaincy. Still, he's led junior teams and he's led quite well. Nothing much he can do when you don't put enough runs on the board," Dravid concluded.