The head coach of Delhi Capitals Ricky Ponting has acknowledged that it was a difficult decision to drop struggling opener Prithvi Shaw from the playing XI. However, he supported the decision by stating that many openers in other teams participating in the Indian Premier League are currently performing better than the young batter.
In the current season of IPL, Prithvi Shaw has played a total of six innings for Delhi Capitals, but he has only managed to score 47 runs and appeared to be completely out of form. DC has also attempted to use him as an “Impact Player,” but this strategy did not give any fruitful results to the Delhi Capitals.
Ahead of their away game against SunRisers Hyderabad on April 24, Delhi Capitals made the decision to exclude Prithvi Shaw from their playing XI. They will once again play against SRH in their home game on April 29. During a pre-match conference, Ricky Ponting opened up on the situation regarding the exclusion of Prithvi Shaw from the team.
The former Australian captain said, “I think it’s 13 games (including IPL 2022) since Prithvi has made a 50 opening the batting for the Delhi capitals. There are a lot of other players at the top of the order with other teams that are playing a whole lot better than Prithvi.”
He further added, “Prithvi at his absolute best we know he’s a match winner. That’s one of the reasons that he’s a retained player because we know if he bats a certain amount of balls, we win about 95% of the games. But so far this season, he hasn’t been able to produce. I think the six games that he played was just over 40-odd runs, so that’s not what we require right now.”
“So is it a tough decision to leave him out but hopefully the team that we put in the park tomorrow can go win another game for us.”
Ricky Ponting said that when Shaw joined the Delhi Capitals ahead of the IPL 2023, it felt that the young batter might have some miracle for the team with his batting but he failed on various occasions and somewhere it also affected the performance of DC in the tournament.
