Former Australian captain Ricky Ponting is widely regarded as one of the finest thinkers of the game. After his retirement from international cricket, Ponting has been active as coach in the Indian Premier League circuit and is determined that Delhi Capitals must end its title drought in 2023.
However, in this new season, the challenge for Ponting and his team is the absence of their regular captain and destructive batsman Rishabh Pant.
“I would have loved to have him around me as much as possible… Hopefully, we will see him in the next few weeks,” the head coach of DC said in an exclusive interaction with this writer.
Pant, 25, has played 98 IPL games with an average of about 35 and a strike rate of almost 148. Pant has been phenomenal in Test cricket for India and is seen as a future captain. The absence of Pant, who is recovering from an accident almost three months ago, has affected the Delhi team’s strategy, but coach Ponting insists the team is trying to keep the bond intact.
“We have had good interactions with Rishabh over the last three months. I had an interesting chat with him just before the first game. He sent a nice video and message to our team which was played in our team meeting,” Ponting said.
From a coach’s point of view, this IPL is different from previous editions because of the new Impact Player rule. According to the rule, a captain can choose the team line-up based on whether they are batting or bowling first. Also, the 12th player can be chosen from a wider field of five substitute players, which makes the job of the captain a little tough and hence the coach’s role becomes more critical.
“It is a little bit more challenging, I guess. We did put a fair bit of thought, going into the first match, about what type of player we might need for the Impact Player. Obviously, it changes (the selection of Impact Player) when you bat first or bowl first. Look, I think potentially it is a really very good innovation,” said the former Australian great who retired with 71 international hundreds, the second-most at that point of time after Sachin Tendulkar.
The reason for Impact Player is to have more Indian players involved in the IPL, Ponting said. Probably, each team will use it with a different philosophy. Delhi Capitals came up with different ideas on how to use it in game number one (against Lucknow Super Giants which they lost).
“As the tournament goes on, it will start to evolve a lot more,” explained Ponting.
Remarkably, Ponting immediately noticed some flaws with the new rule and is not hesitant to speak publicly about it because that is how it can help the game.
“As we saw in the first game, I think there is a fair bit of refinement to be done by the IPL (Governing Council) to make the timing a little bit better. Way too much time was wasted when we wanted to use Aman Khan as an Impact Player in the first game. I think they need to tighten up on that and if they do that then it will be a good move,” Ponting added.
The Impact Player rule is obviously inspired by the X-Factor rule in Australia's Big Bash League. Before the IPL, the Board of Control for Cricket in India experimented with it in the 2022 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy (a domestic T20 tournament). With a bit of modification, IPL’s move is being seen as revolutionary in cricket.
While Chennai Super Kings’ skipper MS Dhoni calls it luxury, which is some sort of endorsement for this rule, India’s T20 captain Hardik Pandya has said that he has left this rule to his coach. Perhaps at the end of the IPL, there will be a better view of this rule and even the possibility of this being tried in international cricket.
“It is so new, probably we don’t know as of now what sort of impact it is going to have on this tournament. I guess there is a different way of looking at this. In any case, if you name your best XI or name a team, the Impact Player is not your best player anyway. It is an interesting way of looking at it. If it has a big impact on the tournament, then maybe ICC can look into it and think about using it in other events,” Ponting said.
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