IPL 2023, “If he’s able to travel and be around the club, I want him in the dugout with me every day of the week.” Although Rishabh Pant has been ruled out of the upcoming IPL 2023, Delhi Capitals head coach Ricky Ponting believes the team’s formal captain still has a role to play. Ponting hopes Pant will be able to join the squad throughout the season if he has healed enough.
IPL 2023
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I want him in the dugout with me every day of the week,” Ponting told the ICC review. “Even if he isn’t physically healthy enough to play, we’d still want to have him around. “Being the captain, he’s the type of cultural leader of the group, and that attitude, contagious grin, and laugh are what we all like about him.
I’ll make certain that, when we meet in Delhi in the middle of March to begin our camps and such, if he’s able to go, he stays the whole time.” Pant was injured in a vehicle accident on December 30 and is projected to miss most of 2023.
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He tore three critical ligaments in his knee, two of which were replaced on January 7, and the third is scheduled for surgery in February. Ponting also said that the Capitals were looking for a wicketkeeper-batter to replace Pant, but emphasized the difficulty of the hunt.
Who can take Pant’s place?
The capitals purchased five players but no wicketkeeper in the IPL 2023 December auction. The only other full-time wicketkeeper in their lineup is England’s Phil Salt, who is presently playing for Pretoria Capitals in South Africa’s SA20 league.
Sarfaraz Khan, among Indians, has been a part-time wicketkeeper for Mumbai in the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 event. “You can’t replace those folks, plain and simple,” Ponting added. “Players like that don’t grow on trees. We need to seek for – and are currently looking for – a successor for the team.”
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The capitals finished sixth in the IPL 2022 and lost in the second Qualifier in 2021 with the Pant-Ponting combo at the helm. When Shreyas Iyer was captain, they finished second in 2020, their highest result. The 2023 season is slated to begin in late March, after the debut edition of the women’s IPL, and will go through April and May.