‘He needs some more support around him from our top-order batters’ – Ricky Ponting urges Delhi Capitals batters to rally around skipper David Warner

Having registered two back-to-back wins, Delhi Capitals will look to keep the winning momentum going when they take on Sunrisers Hyderabad in their next match at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, New Delhi on Saturday.

Speaking ahead of the game, Delhi Capitals Head Coach Ricky Ponting said, “I think it’s fair to say it’s been a reasonably frustrating start for us. If you look at our performances so far, we haven’t really been able to put a full 40 overs of good high-quality cricket together. One day we’ve been okay with the bat, not so good with the ball, and other days we’ve been outstanding with the ball, not so good with a bat, so these things tend to happen in T20 cricket. There are very fine margins a lot of time between failure and success, but saying that, we’ve been able to win our last two games.”

David Warner-led side are coming off a thrilling seven-run win over Sunrisers Hyderabad, courtesy of a solid bowling performance as they successfully defended a below-par target of 145 in their previous game against the same opponent.   

“We are back home now against the same team that we have just beaten in the away game a couple of days ago, so we got some pretty clear areas of our game that we need to work on, and we’ll go about addressing those again today. And hopefully, when we turn up tomorrow, we can put together that 40 overs of really good cricket that I expect from our players,” Ponting stated.  

Reflecting on Warner’s captaincy and the challenges that he has faced in the season so far, Ponting said, “It’s been a challenge for David as it has been for all of us. When you are 7 games in and you’ve only won two, it’s a challenging time. We can’t hide from that. We are working hard probably as hard as any other team in the tournament to try and win every game that we can. And, so far it hasn’t worked out the way we wanted to. But, David has been a consistent run-scorer at the top, he needs some more support around him from our top-order batters which will make things a bit easier.”

“His Captaincy in the last game in particular was as good as I’ve seen anyone lead a team. You know, to pull the bowling changes as he did and stick to his gut instinct right through the course of that game was outstanding. And, I said that to him at the end of the game, that’s the reason his captaincy experience and knowledge play a big part in winning games for us,” he concluded. 

The Delhi Capitals will take on Sunrisers Hyderabad in their next match at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, New Delhi on Saturday.