“I want him sitting beside me in the dugout every day of the week,” Ponting told the ICC review. “If he’s actually not physically fit enough to play, we’d still love to have him around.
“He’s the sort of cultural leader around the group, being the captain, and that attitude and infectious smile and laugh he has is what we all love so much about him.”
“If he’s actually able to travel and be around the team, then I want him sitting beside me in the dugout every day of the week,” he said. “I’ll certainly be making sure, come the middle of March when we get together in Delhi and start our camps and stuff, if he’s able to be there, then I want him around the whole time.”
Ponting also said that Capitals are also searching for a wicketkeeper-batter to replace Pant’s, but stressed on how difficult it is to replace players of his quality.
At the December 2022 auction, the Capitals bought five players but no wicketkeeper, leaving Pant as the only gloveman in the squad. Sarfaraz Khan, though, has been a part-time wicketkeeper for Mumbai in the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament.
“You can’t replace those guys, simple as that,” Ponting said. “They don’t grow on trees, players like that. We’ve got to look at – and we already are – a replacement to come into the squad.”
With the Pant-Ponting combination at the helm, the Capitals finished runners-up in IPL 2020, lost in the eliminator in IPL 2021 and were fifth in IPL 2022. The 2023 edition of the IPL is expected to start towards the end of March – after the inaugural edition of the women’s IPL – and will run through the months of April and May.
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