Ricky Ponting said that he is going to have a “hard conversation” with Ravichandran Ashwin regarding mankading. He insisted that it would be the first thing he would do ahead of the season as Ashwin would be playing for Delhi Capitals this year.
No mankading while playing for DC
Last year IPL saw ‘mankading’ England’s Jos Buttler which gave birth a to one of the fiery controversies of the Indian Premier League. This year Ashwin will be seen in Delhi Capitals jersey which means he will be under the coaching of Aussie legend Ricky Ponting. Speaking on The Grade Cricketer Podcast, Ponting disclosed that last year he had told his boys after the incident that nobody from the DC side would be repeating it. Now that Ashwin is going to play for DC, Ponting is all set to have a conversation with him regarding the same. “I’ll be having a chat with him about [mankad], that’s the first thing I’ll do. Obviously, he wasn’t in our squad last year, he’s one of our players that we tried to afford to bring in this year.”
Ponting continued, “Look, he’s a terrific bowler, and he’s done a great job in the IPL for a long period of time now, but I must admit watching that last season, as soon as it happened and he did that, I actually sat our boys down and said ‘Look, I know he’s done it, there’ll be others around the tournament who’ll think about doing this well but that’s not going to be the way that we play our cricket. We won’t be doing that’.”
A hard conversation to make Ashwin understand the issue
Ricky Ponting ensured that it is going to be a tough talk between him and Ashwin. He believes that Ashwin will take it sportingly. “So, that’s going to be a conversation and that’s going to be a hard conversation I will have to have with him, but I’m pretty sure he’ll take it on the chin. I think, even him, looking back now, probably he’d say it was within the rules and he’s right to do it, but this is not within the spirit of the game, not in the way I want, at least with the Delhi Capitals anyway.”
On the other hand, Ravichandran Ashwin never admitted any ‘mistake’. In fact, he always defended his act citing rules. Ponting has a different solution albeit. “I think there’s ways that you can actually stop batsmen cheating like that. If the bowler was to stop, and the batsman was a foot out of his crease for instance, why don’t you just penalise him some runs or something? Then they won’t do it again.” He added, “I chatted to some of the match referees about it during last year’s IPL as well. If the umpires make a stance and do something to warn the batsman that they might be cheating, then that’s better than having the ugly incident of a mankad.”
