The much-awaited Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 will kickstart on March 31, and the fans are very excited about the event. However, India’s star wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant’s absence from the marquee tournament is something really hard to believe for many cricket enthusiasts around the world. Notably, Pant sustained multiple injuries in December 2022 in a car accident and is currently on the recovery path.
Although Delhi Capitals (DC) have announced David Warner as their new skipper for the IPL 2023 following Pant’s exclusion from the league, many out there, including the team’s head coach Ricky Ponting feel that there’s no one who can fill in the shoes of the 25-year-old Uttarakhand cricketer.
In an event on Friday (March 24), Ponting made it clear that Pant is irreplaceable and hailed him as one of the best players.
“He’s a huge loss and it doesn’t matter who we bring in that role, we will still miss Rishabh. I am not going to try and gloss over that fact, he’s one of the best players in the world in all three formats and he’s obviously our leader. So, trying to replace him is pretty much impossible. But what we try to do at DC is make sure we have got the best young talent available and get to work on them for a couple of years and make them better and we have got a few of them now,” Ponting was reported saying by The Hindu.
Australia great further revealed that the Delhi-based franchise is planning to have Rishabh around in the dugout if possible, and if not, then they will show their support to the left-handed batter in a unique way by donning his jersey number.
“I have spoken to him quite a bit over the last four-five months. He has a long road back, but we want to try and involve him as much as we can. In an ideal world, he’d be sitting next to me in the dugout every match. But if that’s not possible, we’d like to think of little ways we might include him, have his number on our shirts or caps — just so the players understand he’s the heart and soul of DC and also for fans, to show how much he’s a part of us,” added Ponting.
DC will start their IPL 2023 campaign against Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) on April 1.
