Can't blame Indian players, consistent batting could have made us a

Delhi Daredevils coach Ricky Ponting today heaped praise on the Indian players, especially Rishabh Pant and Shreyas Iyer, but rued the lack of consistent performance from the rest of the batting unit during the IPL season.

Delhi Daredevils notched up back-to-back wins in their last two round-robin matches and Ponting said his team could have been a threat to leading teams if they were consistent.

"We can't blame the Indian players, they have been outstanding, we can't complain," Ponting said after Delhi knocked out Mumbai Indians with a 11-run win here.

"Prithvi Shaw, Sandeep are some of the talented players we have and I hope they will have a long and successful IPL career here with us."
"It gave opportunity to Prithvi Shaw to play and Shreyas stepping up for the captaincy. It was a daunting thing to do to captain and I think he handled the challenge well. He is a tremendous young guy and I won't be surprised if I see more leadership role for him in future."
"I think the thing that held him was the wish to play well. He missed the first game due to Aaron Finch's wedding. When he came back into the side, he was batting at number 5, he didn't play all that much in that position and he was frustrated that he didnt have an impact on the result for his team."
"Even tonight, opening the batting for us and we knew he would have to bowl a few overs also. So we persisted with him."
"As a batsman it shouldn't come down to batsmen 9,10 or 11 it shouldn't. We had similar problems in the past. We lost 4/30 through the middle of the match. We got close but it dragged us down at the end of the day."