Delhi Capitals‘ head coach, Ricky Ponting has recently stated that Rishabh Pant is an irreplaceable part of the franchise.
He feels that Pant is the heart and soul of DC and is the most vital cog of the squad and his presence will be missed by everyone.
As per reports, Pant is still under rehabilitation and will not play the entire 2023 season of the IPL for DC. Ponting has also stated that Pant is probably one of the best players across formats.
However, he has said that the franchise is working with the other players in the squad to make them better.
He’s a huge loss and it doesn’t matter who we bring in in that role, we will still miss Rishabh. I am not going to try and gloss over that fact, he’s one of the best players in the world in all three formats and he’s obviously our leader. So, trying to replace him is pretty much impossible. But what we try to do at DC is make sure we have got the best young talent available and get to work on them for a couple of years and make them better and we have got a few of them now.
Ponting, however, has given some options for who can fill in for Pant in the middle order.
Sarfaraz Khan, Yash Dhull can easily slot into the middle-order. Lalit Yadav played some games last year and Aman Khan has been ultra impressive. Last couple of days’ training, he’s been very special. We have Rovman Powell, even Axar’s batting has improved a lot so we will try and find a cover for Rishabh. You are not going to get the same quality but we think we can have a middle-order as good as any other team.
Ponting wants to have Rishabh’s number etched on to DC’s jerseys and caps
On the other hand, Ponting has said that they will try to bring in Pant through some small gesture that will make the team feel about how important he is to the setup.
That’s why he’s thinking of etching Pant’s number onto the jerseys and caps of all the players.
I have spoken to him quite a bit over the last four-five months. He has a long road back, but we want to try and involve him as much as we can. In an ideal world, he’s be sitting next to me in the dugout every match. But if that’s not possible, we’d like to think of little ways we might include him, have his number on our shirts or caps- just so the players understand he’s the heart and soul of DC and also for fans, to show how much he’s a part of us.
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