Delhi Capitals head coach Ricky Ponting is happy to have a fit-again captain, Rishabh Pant, back in the team ahead of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024. Having been declared fit by the BCCI medical team, the swashbuckling wicketkeeper-batter is set to lead Delhi Capitals in IPL 2024, starting March 22 as well. Ponting also shared his first impressions after his first training session with the team on Thursday as well.
“What I saw today was very exciting, very promising. It’s great to be back with the Delhi Capitals family,” Ponting reflected. “It’s just the start. We don’t expect to be practising at our absolute best right now. We’re not even so much looking forward to the first game yet. We’re getting some volume work done.”
ALSO READ: Kirti Azad welcomes BCCI’s new directive in central contract
While talking about his reunion with wicketkeeper-batter Rishabh Pant, he said, “We missed him incredibly last year. The whole tournament missed him. Rishabh brings so much energy to the team. He’s got that smile on his face, he’s hitting the ball as good as ever and he tends to lift all of his teammates around him.”
Meanwhile, Ricky Panting also opined on the team’s approach this year as well. The Delhi Capitals will start their IPL 2024 campaign against Punjab Kings on Saturday, 23 Match 2024 at Maharaja Yadavindra Singh Stadium in Mohali as well.
“It’s not a different approach, it’s the same, but I’m going to be more intense with the way that I go about it this year. Every time I come here I talk about wanting to win the IPL and nothing changes there. I’m just going to talk about that a lot more this year. I want the guys to be fully engaged and that’s the reason we’re all here. It’s my job to bring success to this team. We’re not talking about just winning enough games to qualify. We’re talking about winning the IPL. Everything we do, every training session we have, every meeting we have, every recovery session we have, every chat that I have with the players is going to be about making them better to give ourselves the best chance of winning,” Ricky Ponting concluded.
