Worst Pitch Ever: Delhi Capitals Coach Ponting Blasts Kotla Track

Delhi coach Ricky Ponting the SRH bowlers adapted to the situations better. 

(Photo: BCCI)

Sunrisers Hyderabad defeated Delhi Capitals on Thursday, 4 April, by five wickets in Delhi, making it their third consecutive win. After the match, former Australian player and Delhi coach Ricky Ponting tells how it was the worst pitch that they played on so far.

At a post-match press conference, Ponting said that the "bowlers played smartly on that wicket. That wicket surprised us. The groundsmen expected it to be the best pitch and by far it was the worst."

Talking about the bowling by the winning team, Ponting said, "I think their bowlers adapted to those conditions very well. They've have got very skillful bowlers.

We knew that in this wicket, we need to get on to a good start, unfortunately we didn't do that today."

Delhi has got some work to do, the coach added. "This is our home ground, we need to learn to play in these conditions. The oppositions have played better than us, so we definitely have to imporve there."

Stressing on the performaces by the batsmen, he said, "Some of our other senior players didn't bat long enough into the innings as well to be able to post a total that was defendable. I mean, 130 was short of what we were expecting. We expect our batting group to get a 160-165 on any surface when we bat first. We need to talk about that."

Since the team has lost its third game in a row, Ponting said that things need to be positive around the players.

"We are all in this together, we all have to find ways to imporve and get better. I can't blame the performance of the bowlers today. We simply didn't get enough runs batting first. I think we did a really great job to drag the game out as much as we did. The fightback from the end of the SRH powerplay till the end of the game was the way that I expect our team to play," he added.