New Delhi: Ahead of the 14th edition of the Indian Premier League Delhi Capitals head coach Ricky Ponting has revealed his struggles with coaching batsman Prithvi Shaw. He revealed that Shaw refused to bat in the nets when he hit a bad patch in the last IPL and hoped that the youngster has changed his training habits ahead of the upcoming edition.
“He had an interesting theory on his batting last year. When he’s not scoring runs, he won’t bat, and when he is scoring runs, he wants to keep batting all the time. He had four or five games where he made under ten and I’m telling him, ‘We have to go to the nets and work out, and he looked me in the eye and said, ‘No, I’m not batting today’. I couldn’t really work that out.” Ponting was quoted saying to cricket.com.au.
“He might have changed. I know he’s done a lot of work over the last few months, that theory that he had might have changed, and hopefully, it has, because if we can get the best out of him, he could be a superstar player.”
The 46-year-old said that there haven’t been many players more talented than Prithvi Shaw. Ponting reckons if the opener could continue his form into the this years IPL as well, it will help the Capitals very much. Shaw, who started the tournament as the Capitals incumbent opener but eventually lost his place in the XI due to poor form.
“Maybe his training habits have changed for the better, because his success won’t just be for the Delhi Capitals, I’m sure you’ll see him play a lot of cricket for India as well in the coming years. He’s diminutive, in the Tendulkar sort of mold but hits the ball incredibly powerfully off front and back foot, and plays spin really well.”
Ponting, who has been working with the young Indian batsman for the past two seasons in the DC camp reckons, “If we can get him to take that form that he’s just shown into the IPL, it just makes the balance on our Delhi Capitals side so good. If [the penny] does drop – I’m not sure I’ve seen many more talented players than him in my whole time of playing the game.”
After being dropped during the Australia Test series, the 21-year-old had a sensational domestic T20, Vijay Hazare Trophy campaign where he played for champions Mumbai. Leading the side to victory, he scored 754 runs in the tournament. He also surpassed Mayank Agarwal’s record of scoring most runs in a single Vijay Hazare Trophy edition.
