Sydney: Former Australian captain and Indian Premier League (IPL) side Delhi Capitals’ head coach Ricky Ponting has said that opener Prithvi Shaw and fast bowler Avesh Khan –both of whom he coached at Delhi Capitals–, as well as Chennai Super Kings’ Ruturaj Gaikwad were exciting prospects for the upcoming IPL season and also the Indian cricket team.
Having coached in the IPL for three seasons, Ponting has watched several players rise and make a mark in the lucrative league.
“I hung on to one at the Delhi Capitals this year, one of our retained players is Prithvi Shaw, who we saw some absolute brilliance from through the IPL season last year,” said Ponting on Friday. Following his fine performance with the bat in IPL 2021, young Shaw was retained along with three others by Delhi Capitals ahead of the mega auction on Feb 12-13.
Ponting said Shaw was still learning the finer nuances of the game, which is good for his IPL franchise and Indian cricket.
“Everyone’s known a bit about him (Shaw) for the last couple of years. I still think he is learning a lot about himself as a person and learning a lot about himself as a player. I am not sure I have seen many better to be totally honest.
“He is someone that when he isn’t batting well, doesn’t want to bat a lot. When he is batting well, he wants to bat all the time. And that sort of went against the grain of what I felt and knew as a player myself. But to get the best out of him, we will just let him go and get himself organised and sorted,” Ponting told ICC on Friday.
“The other one that I thought was absolutely outstanding and I have only seen him in T20 cricket, but that’s Ruturaj Gaikwad from Chennai Super Kings. He ended up being a part of the winning IPL team, a young guy that got a chance at the start of the season.
“Everyone knew that he was a nice player, more of a technically-correct sort of player but by the end of the IPL, he was doing some amazing things. He is someone who is I am sure going to play all three formats for India in the coming years. On the batting side of things, there are those couple there.
“We have Avesh Khan at Delhi Capitals last year who had an unbelievably good IPL season. He has been included in a couple of Indian squads.”
(IANS)