Delhi Capitals coach Ricky Ponting has expressed optimism about Rishabh Pant‘s availability for the upcoming IPL season, stating that the wicketkeeper-batsman is “very confident” about his fitness. However, Ponting remains unsure whether Pant will be able to captain the team for the entire tournament or keep wicket, given that he is still recovering from injuries sustained in a major car accident.
Pant has not played since his car accident in December 2022, during which he feared for his life. Ponting, speaking in Melbourne after being unveiled as Washington Freedom’s new MLC coach, revealed that Pant is bullish about his chances of playing in the IPL but cautioned that anything they get from him would be a bonus.
“Rishabh is very confident that he’s going to be right to play,” Ponting said. “In what capacity we’re not quite sure yet. You would have seen all the social-media stuff, he’s up and about and running well. But in saying that we’re only six weeks away from the first game as well. So we’re not sure if we’ll get wicketkeeping out of him this year.
“But I’ll guarantee if I asked him now he’ll say, ‘I’m playing every game, I’m keeping every game and I’m batting at No.4.’ That’s just what he’s like, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed.”
Ponting emphasized the dynamic nature of Pant’s playing style and the team’s reliance on him as captain. He highlighted Pant’s journey over the past year, describing his car accident as a “horrific incident” and expressing gratitude that Pant survived and has the opportunity to play cricket again.
“We’ll just keep our fingers crossed and hope that he can be out there and play. Even if it’s not all the games, if we can manage him through 10 of the 14 games or whatever that might be then whatever games you can get out of him will be a bonus.”
Ponting also confirmed that David Warner would captain the team again if Pant was unavailable. He expressed satisfaction with the squad assembled after the December auction but acknowledged that the team had underperformed in the last two seasons.
“With Harry Brook coming into the set-up as well, so Warner, [Mitch] Marsh, Harry Brook, we’ve got some really good overseas batters,” Ponting said. “Marsh and Warner will bat up the top somewhere and Harry Brook has been finishing off with England, so he’ll probably play a finishing role for us there.
“[If] we can get [Anrich] Nortje and Jhye Richardson fit, and with the two spin options we’ve got with Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav we’ve got a really good squad that to be fair has probably underperformed the last couple of years, so we’ve got some work to do.”
Ponting highlighted Richardson’s availability as a major question mark for the Capitals. The Australian quick has been sidelined since injuring his side during the BBL, with no timeline for his return. Ponting expressed concern about the team’s batting performance, particularly at their home ground in Delhi, where they struggled in IPL 2023.
“Our batting was disappointing last year,” Ponting said. “A lot of the guys that we felt would be able to handle difficult conditions in Delhi, a spinning wicket a lot of the time, we weren’t good enough in those conditions.
“We’ve got some challenges with our home venue to be honest. We rock up every game, we’re not really sure exactly what sort of wicket we’re going to get.
“So you’d go to the auction expecting you’re going to get one [type] of surface and you rock up for five games, seven games there and you get five different pitches so that does make it hard. But we definitely lacked on batting quality last year, which is what we’ve tried to really improve on this year.
“We’ve gone to the well with a couple of really highly talented young Indian players that we think that are ready to play straight away. That’s the thing about the IPL, it’s one year to the big auction so it’s not like you can really invest too much in these young blokes and hope to improve them overnight. You’ve got to get the best talent out there that you think’s ready to play. And we’ve got a few of those this year.”
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