Former Australia skipper and Delhi Capitals coach, Ricky Ponting has said that he expects Chris Woakes, the England all-rounder, and Australia pacer, Pat Cummins to go big at the upcoming IPL auction.
Both have been part of the IPL before with Cummins playing for the Delhi franchise in 2017 and topping the wicket-taking chart with 15 wickets in 12 games. The seamer has set a base price of INR 2 crore, the highest, this year.
Woakes was part of the Kolkata Knight Riders and Royal Challengers Bangalore but hasn’t set the stage on fire. He has set a base price of INR 1.5 crore.
“There’s going to be a lot of focus and attention on fast bowlers, overseas ones in particular. Pat Cummins could go for big money, as could Chris Woakes,” Ponting said. “Allrounders are always interesting in my opinion. Players like Glenn Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis, Mitchell Marsh, Jimmy Neesham, Colin de Grandhomme could all be big picks.”
Ponting believes that Delhi made a couple of good additions in Ravichandran Ashwin and Ajinkya Rahane to counter the Kotla pitch.
“They are the kind of players who are likely to do well on the [Ferozshah] Kotla wicket, and of course, bring tremendous experience with them.”
“Going into the auction you have to be very specific about the kind of players you need,” Ponting said. “For instance, we’ve got three openers [Rahane, Shikhar Dhawan and Prithvi Shaw], so we don’t need to look for one. You need to identify the problem areas in your starting eleven, and essentially plug the gaps.
“We’ve had several discussions over the last few months, and have put in a lot of time and effort to make sure that we’re well prepared. You can do all the planning in the world, but at the auction table, the unpredictable always happens.”
Delhi had final-four finishes in 2008, 2009, 2012 and 2019, but has mostly been below par.
“The semi-final loss against Chennai [Super Kings] was disappointing of course,” Ponting said of the 2019 season. “But we played some great cricket, and even now, about 7-8 months after the tournament, I feel like there were times when we were the best team in the competition.
“I just remember how much fun everybody had. It was a totally different environment than most other IPLs that I have been a part of. The idea is to recreate that atmosphere and culture with our new and existing bunch of players.”