Delhi Capitals head coach Ricky Ponting believes that the management’s decision to send Marcus Stoinis to No.3 was right. However, he admitted that DC did not get the desired outcome because the Sharjah surface was difficult to bat in the first innings.
Stoinis played his first game since injuring his hamstring while bowling on September 22 but managed to score a sluggish 16 off 23 balls when promoted to number three by coach Ricky Ponting. Delhi huffed and puffed to post a below-par 135/5 before Kolkata survived late hiccups to overhaul the 136-run target in 19.5 overs in Qualifier 2.
“No, I don’t think so,” said Ponting during the post-match press conference when asked if sending Stoinis at number 3 backfired.
Ponting was questioned why he overlooked Steve Smith for Stoinis in the crunch game, given the all-rounder appeared not to be fully fit.
“We thought long and hard about where Marcus’s best bet would be the batting order for us today. I mean, as we all are aware, he missed about three weeks with a hamstring injury, so he hadn’t played any cricket.
Ponting also pointed out how Indian players struggled to score in Qualifier 2 against KKR.
“As you saw today, with that type of pitch, it’s really difficult for any new batsman to come in and start on. Even Shikhar at the top didn’t get away from the flier that we were after,” said Ponting.
“Middle-order players, Indian players even struggled to get going on that surface. So, I think it was the right decision. We probably didn’t get the outcome that we were after, though,” he added.
Ponting feels conditions “changed dramatically” in the second innings and also praised Iyer for his gutsy knock.
“As you would have noticed watching the game, the conditions changed dramatically from first innings to second innings. I mean the first probably 10 overs of their beginnings, when they had a newish ball and dew was on the ground, certainly made batting look a lot easier than what it seemed for our guys, but that’s more the reason why we had to make more runs than we did in the first innings.”
