Delhi Capitals, one of the few franchises to have failed in their pursuit of winning an Indian Premier League (IPL) title, gears up for another season, with Rishabh Pant back as captain. Though Delhi have had some fine players in their ranks, they've only managed to go as far as the final of the tournament once. Mohammad Kaif, a former coach and mentor with the franchise, feels the lack of success at Delhi Capitals is because of the franchise's inability to back players.
"When I was there, we went to the final in one season and finished top three in the other two seasons. I think the players are not getting backed properly. They are not able to identify players and back them. You can ask the same question of RCB," Mohammed Kaif said in an interview with Lallantop.
In the IPL 2023 season, the Delhi Capitals only managed to secure a 9th-place finish. But, ahead of the new campaign, the franchise has been boosted with the return of skipper Rishabh Pant.
"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," Ricky Ponting, referring to the workload at the training session.
"What I saw was very exciting, very promising. It's great to be back with the Delhi Capitals family," the coach said on the early training sessions with the franchise.
It is not just the players, who need to up their intensity but the coach himself wants to raise his level of preparedness.
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." For Ponting, it is not about qualification for the last-four but winning the elusive championship for the franchise.
"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 said.
With PTI inputs