Delhi Capitals’ (DC) coach Ricky Ponting said that they were outplayed against the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) after his side’s loss to them by 15 runs in the Indian Premier League (IPL), on Tuesday, 29 September.
“Sunrisers did what they needed to do, especially with the bat in their top-order partnerships, they rotated the strike well and they had few of their top order [players] going on to make big scores, so at the end of the day that was probably the difference in the game.”
On low strike rates of DC’s top-order batsmen, Shikhar Dhawan, Shreyas Iyer and Rishabh Pant, Ponting said that they don’t blame any one person for the loss, they lost the game as a team on Tuesday.
“We were only 15 runs away at the end of the game. Was it just that one big over that we were short on today, was it that we didn’t get enough in the powerplay, was it that one of our top-order batsmen didn’t go on to make a big score?” He added that they have to analyse and talk about these things and rued the fact that none of the batsmen from their top four went on to make a big score.
On how the pitch played and their decision to bowl first, Ponting said that the wicket started slow and applauded the SRH openers, David Warner and Jonny Bairstow for getting boundaries at the right time. “We wanted to chase, we felt there might have been a bit of dew, having walked off the outfield now there was a bit of dew, so no excuses, we were outplayed today.”
The 45-year-old heaped praised on fast bowler Kagiso Rabada. He said that Rabada is an ultimate competitor, he loves to compete, loves playing the game and has been exceptional for them for the last couple of years.
Ponting also added that they needed to target SRH’s fifth bowler, Abhishek Sharma, and regretted the loss of a wicket in the 8th over, which helped Sharma to have a new batsman against him. “We targeted his 3rd and 4th over but we couldn’t get as many off his third that we needed to and the game from that moment started to slip away from us.”
Sharma gave away only 19 runs in his first three overs before going for 15 in his last, where Rishabh Pant hit two sixes off the last two balls of the over.
Ponting also commended the SRH bowlers saying that Bhuvneshwar took the early wicket of Prithvi Shaw and Khaleel Ahmed and T Natarajan executed their yorkers better than their bowlers and added that it was another area which they need to look at.
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