IPL 2022: It's Easy To Make Judgments From Outside - Ricky Ponting Defends Rishabh Pant's On-Field Decision Making

Delhi Capitals (DC) head coach Ricky Ponting has come to the defence of his under-fire skipper, Rishabh Pant, following DC’s crushing 91-run loss to Chennai Super Kings (CSK) on Sunday.

Pant and co. were dismantled by the 4-time champions following which, former players criticized Pant’s captaincy on the field. However, Ponting said that he fully backs whatever the 24-year-old decides and said it isn’t an easy thing to do.

“I fully back every decision he (Pant) takes on the field. Being a T20 captain before, I know you don’t have a lot of time to think about it, especially under extreme pressure. It is easy to make judgments from outside but trust me when you are in the middle it is not an easy thing to do.”

“A captain makes decisions in a very short time and the decision he takes he thinks is the best for the team at that given time of the match. He takes things like boundary size and batsmen at the crease into account when he takes those decisions,” Ponting said at the post-match press conference.

“There were not many positives to take from the match” – Ricky Ponting on the defeat

Batting first, CSK put up 208/6 on the board courtesy of an excellent 49-ball 89 from Player of the Match, Devon Conway. In response, Moeen Ali blew away the middle order of DC and they were skittled out for 117, ending in the biggest defeat of the season.

“Our bowling was not up to the mark, similarly our batting was very very poor. There were not many positives to take from the match. The only positive was Khaleel Ahmed, he was outstanding with the ball again.

“To lose by 91 runs, will put a huge dent in our net run rate. It means we need to bounce back really strongly in our next game.”

“We would think we can make the playoffs with three wins. Eight wins might be enough to get in and one big win might help our net run rate. Who knows we can be in the final.

“That is what we can think of, what happened has happened and we would want to look to the future and look for a rebound from a bad performance,” he further added.

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