IPL 2024: I’m going to be more intense this year, says Delhi Capitals’ head coach Ricky Ponting

Visakhapatnam:  As Delhi Capitals gear up for the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024, head coach Ricky Ponting took a moment to share his impressions following his first training session.

“What I saw today was very exciting, very promising. It’s great to be back with the Delhi Capitals family,” Ponting reflected after the JSW and GMR co-owned franchise had its first training session on Thursday.

The Australian legend further added, “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.”

Talking about his reunion with the wicketkeeper-batter Rishabh Pant, the DC head coach 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.”

When asked about the team’s approach this year, Ponting said, “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,” he concluded.

The Delhi Capitals will start their IPL 2024 campaign against Punjab Kings on Saturday, 23 Match 2024 at Maharaja Yadavindra Singh Stadium in Mohali.

–IANS