Navi Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India]- After facing a crushing defeat against Chennai Super Kings, Delhi Capitals’ head coach Ricky Ponting was concerned about his team’s net run rate as it would affect their chances of going into the play-offs.
An all-round display by Chennai Super Kings, led by Devon Conway’s 87 and Moeen Ali’s 3/13 helped them seal a 91-run win over Delhi Capitals here at DY Patil Stadium on Sunday.
“To lose by 91 runs, it 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 play-offs 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,” said Ponting in a post-match presentation.
Apart from Moeen, Mukesh Choudhary, Simarjeet Singh, and Dwayne Bravo scalped two wickets each and bowled out the Capitals at 117. The head coach backed Delhi’s skipper and said that ‘it’s easy to make judgment from outside’.
“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,” said the head coach.
“He takes things like boundary size and batsmen at the crease into account when he takes those decisions. 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,” he added.
Delhi Capitals will now be facing Rajasthan Royals for their next IPL 2022 clash on Wednesday, at the same venue.
