Dubai: Delhi Capitals head coach Ricky Ponting feels the team has slotted far too may training sessions ahead of the IPL and considering the heat in the UAE, he says the duration of team’s training will depend on how it “shapes up” after every session.
Ponting oversaw the first session of the team on Tuesday following his six-day quarantine upon arrival in Dubai. Weather conditions will be a challenge for all teams and Ponting said they can be overcome by managing training sessions better.
“We’ve got a smaller squad so I want to sort of manage our training sessions differently than we did last year. I’ve made it clear to the boys that we are not going to over-train in the first three weeks. I believe our preparation leading up to the first game is critical,” Ponting said in a team statement.
“I want to make sure that physically, technically and tactically the boys are peaking for the first game. “It is an unusual time we have got — having three weeks — I think we had slotted in about 20 training sessions before our first game, which in my opinion are too many, so we are just going to see how the boys are shaping up after every training session and then take it from there,” added the 45-year-old.
Ponting had guided Delhi to their first play-off birth last year since the 2012 season.
‘Mankading’
Delhi Capitals spinner Ravichandran Ashwin revealed details of his conversation with coach Ricky Ponting on Mankading, a controversial but legitimate mode of dismissal in which a bowler runs out a batsman at the non-striker’s end before he bowls the delivery.
Ashwin said that both he and Ponting agreed that batsmen should not be allowed to take extra steps out at the non-striker’s end before a delivery has been bowled. But the latter felt the solution could be a penalty of runs instead of a run out.
According to Ashwin, Ponting said that he understood Ashwin’s viewpoint in supporting the mode of dismissal. “I wasn’t trying to say that you were [not] justified because it is actually in the laws of the game. You can do it,” Ponting told Ashwin, who revealed the conversation on his Youtube channel. “I just think that we have got to find a way around. Trying to stop the batsman [from] cheating. We have had this conversation, already. I don’t want to see anyone running two or three yards down the wicket. Because that basically is cheating,” Ashwin quoted Ponting as saying.
Ashwin had courted controversy in the 2019 edition of the Indian Premier League when he ran out Rajasthan Royals’ Jos Buttler at the non-striker’s end while captaining the Kings XI Punjab. (Agencies)
It drew varied reactions from the cricket fraternity. But Ashwin has said on numerous instances since that he would do it again so as to not allow batsmen to gain an advantage by backing up too far outside the pitch.
Ponting, however, said that he was not in favour of Mankading and said that the first thing he would do after joining the Delhi Capitals in the UAE would be to have a chat with Ashwin about it.
Ashwin, 33, said that he told Ponting why he felt batsmen could not be allowed to take the extra few steps. “Because I couldn’t stand the batsmen taking those extra yards. I was a batsman myself in the junior category, and I feel it is a massive advantage. And the moment I did that, the spirit of cricket was brought into play,” Ashwin told Ponting.
Ashwin then said that the Australian batting great and three-time World Cup winning former captain felt there should some sort of a “run penalty” for non-striking batsmen who take the undue advantage. “If you are to get to the top of your bowling action and stop, and it shows that the batsman is cheating and is out of his crease, I think put a run penalty on them. And do it right from the start, because that will stop him right away. Imagine, taking 10 runs off a team total because you have taken yards…those sort of things need to be looked at,” said Ponting. (IANS)
