Ricky Ponting says Shaw has been below par

New Delhi, April 28

Prithvi Shaw’s pre-tournament net sessions had convinced Delhi Capitals’ head coach Ricky Ponting that a breakthrough IPL season awaited him but he now has to admit that a lot of openers in other IPL teams are performing better than the colourful Mumbai batter.

Shaw has been dropped after playing six games and his return to playing XI looks highly unlikely.

“I think its 13 games (considering IPL 2022 as well) since Prithvi has made a 50 opening the batting for Delhi Capitals. There are a lot of other players at the top of the order with other teams that are playing a whole lot better than Prithvi,” Ponting said today.

Shaw has scored just 47 runs in six games in this IPL.

“Prithvi at his absolute best we know he’s a match winner. That’s one of the reasons that he’s a retained player because we know if he bats a certain amount of balls, we win about 95% of the games,” he said. “But so far this season, he hasn’t been able to produce. I think the six games that he played was just over 40-odd runs, so that’s not what we require right now. So is it a tough decision to leave him out but hopefully the team that we put on the park tomorrow can win another game for us.” — PTI

Pandya’s Titans look to finish off KKR

Kolkata: A resurgent Gujarat Titans, boasting of a power-packed bowling unit, will come in the way of Kolkata Knight Riders’ revival hopes when the two teams cross swords in the IPL here tomorrow. Kolkata’s misfiring campaign finally came on track after they fired in unison to snap their four-match losing streak with a convincing win against Royal Challengers Bangalore. In a season where their Caribbean stars Andre Russell and Sunil Narine are yet to fire, Kolkata, who are without their regular skipper Shreyas Iyer, may just have found a trump card in Jason Roy. The Englishman set the tempo with a fiery half-century for the likes of Nitish Rana, Rinku Singh and David Wiese to capitalise and set a winning total of 201 against Bangalore. Roy has scores of 43, 61 and 56 in three matches and Kolkata’s batting will once again look to him for a good start. The win lifted them to the seventh spot in the standings but they have to win at least five out of their remaining six matches to assure themselves of a playoffs berth.