Ricky Ponting talked about the much-anticipated return of Rishabh Pant to the side and asserted he has started training well and hitting the ball cleanly.
Delhi Capitals head coach Ricky Ponting is elated with the return of Rishabh Pant to the team for the upcoming season of the Indian Premier League. The DC skipper has been declared fit by the BCCI for the wicketkeeper batter role after he was recovered from the multiple injuries which he sustained during a horrific car accident in December 2022.
Rishabh Pant is set to return to competitive cricket with IPL 2024.
The flamboyant batter will be making his comeback to competitive cricket after almost 14 months as in the past year he missed every major tournament including the ODI World Cup and IPL 2023. In his absence, Delhi finished in the ninth spot on the points table last season under David Warner’s leadership. The southpaw has also joined the training camp of the side ahead of the upcoming season.
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Head coach Ponting talked about the side after their first training session on Thursday and said,” What I saw today was very exciting, very promising. It’s great to be back with the Delhi Capitals family.”
Delhi Capitals did some serious business in the auction to strengthen their side after an underwhelming last season. They signed the likes of Kumar Kushagra, Tristian Stubbs and Jhye Richardson, however, they will miss Harry Brook who has withdrawn his name.
“It’s just the start. We don’t expect to be practising at our absolute best right now. We’re not even so much looking forward to the first game yet. We’re getting some volume work done,” he added.
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Ponting further talked about the much-anticipated return of Pant to the side and asserted he has started training well and hitting the ball cleanly.
“We missed him incredibly last year. The whole tournament missed him. Rishabh brings so much energy to the team. He’s got that smile on his face, he’s hitting the ball as good as ever and he tends to lift all of his teammates around him,” he added.
The legendary Australian skipper is desperate to guide DC to their first IPL title and suggested that he is going to be more intense in the quest to achieve glory this season.
“It’s not a different approach, it’s the same, but I’m going to be more intense with the way that I go about it this year. Every time I come here I talk about wanting to win the IPL and nothing changes there. I’m just going to talk about that a lot more this year,” he added.
Ponting said that the message is clear in the team that winning the IPL is the only target in the upcoming season.
“I want the guys to be fully engaged and that’s the reason we’re all here. It’s my job to bring success to this team. We’re not talking about just winning enough games to qualify. We’re talking about winning the IPL. Everything we do, every training session we have, every meeting we have, every recovery session we have, every chat that I have with the players is going to be about making them better to give ourselves the best chance of winning,” he concluded.
