FEROZ SHAH KOTLA : It has been always observed that the wicket of Kotla is quite sluggish as compared to other wickets in India. It always puts question in the viewers mind that how will it behave. Something it spins a lot and sometimes it does not. It always puts the dilemma in Captain’s head that how the wicket will react.
Delhi Capitals coach and former Australian skipper Ricky Ponting was bummed out with Feroz Shah Kotla ground staff. According to the DC coach, the pitch for the match against SRH was more suited for the visiting team as compared to the DC.
The two teams met on Thursday at this ground where SRH comfortably defeated the home team by 5 wickets. In fact, the former Australian captain also pointed out and mentioned that the information which were provided by the ground staff was completely opposite to how the pitch reacted.
Ponting quoted that,’ I think it is fair to say that the wicket surprised a lot. Talking to the groundsmen before the match, we thought this would be the best pitch that we had by far but it was worst. You saw how little it bounced and how slow it was,”
Moreover, he also thought that due to the slowness in the pitch, quick bowlers of DC like Rabada and Ishant were out of the equation and SRH slow and swinging bowlers got the more advantage from the pitch.
Talking with a reporter he also quoted, ‘look, at ‘the end of the day , it is the same pitch for both the teams; but if you would have asked me, would I have wanted to play sunrises on that pitch? I mean, there couldn’t have been a different wicket where you would have to play Hyderabad on,”
With this context he also said, ‘but if the wicket is going to remain like this then we have to think about our selection in our team as well. May be our bowlers were not suited to that wicket today. but it was not what we expected, so we are surprised as anybody else. this is our home ground and we need to play these conditions better than the opposition In two of the three games, our opposition has played better cricket than us, so we definitely have to improve there. we will leave no stones un-turned to make sure we are well prepared for the next games,”
However at the end he backed his young team and thinks that they will surely bounce back no matter how the pitch is going to react in the future, his team will play good cricket.