IPL 2021: “Couldn’t really work it out” – Ricky Ponting speaks on Prithvi Shaw’s refusal to train during rough patch in IPL 2020

IPL 2021: “Couldn’t really work it out” – Ricky Ponting speaks on Prithvi Shaw’s refusal to train during rough patch in IPL 2020

Ricky Ponting and Prithvi Shaw

Promising opener Prithvi Shaw did not have a very good 2020. For Delhi Capitals (DC), in the 2020 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) held in UAE, he could manage only two fifties out of the 13 games that he played. Further, a string of low scores did not help his cause as he was eventually dropped from the side, with Ajinkya Rahane taking his place. The rough patch continued after the IPL in the tour of Australia as well.

In the first test in Adelaide, Prithvi Shaw was dismissed for a duck and 1 run in the two innings. Subsequently, he was dropped from the Indian test squad for the series against England but the Mumbai batsman came roaring back to form with a stunning string of consistent performances in the Vijay Hazare Trophy to lead his side to victory. He would now look to continue in the same vein in IPL 2021 as well.

Ricky Ponting speaks on Prithvi Shaw

Prithvi Shaw
Prithvi Shaw

DC head-coach Ricky Ponting spoke to cricket.com.au about Prithvi Shaw’s performance last season and said, “I’ve tried (taking Shaw under his wing) the last two years and I’ve really enjoyed working with him, but 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 10 and I’m telling him, ‘We have to go to the nets and work out (what’s wrong)‘, and he looked me in the eye and said, ‘No, I’m not batting today’. I couldn’t really work that out,” he added.

Ponting then said, “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.”

Delhi Capitals open their IPL campaign against the Chennai Super Kings on the 10th of April.

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