Delhi Capitals faced their first loss of the season on Tuesday when the side faced a 15-run defeat to Sunrisers Hyderabad. Chasing 163 to win, DC were restricted to 147/7, as key wickets in regular intervals for SRH guided them to their first win of the season.
DC coach Ricky Ponting admitted that there were "outplayed" by the Sunrisers on the night.
When ased about whether the conditions made the difference in the game, Ponting insisted that SRH executed their plans better than his side.
"I don't think the conditions were that different. The grounds are bigger, there are bigger square boundaries here. (But) At the end of the day, we were just outplayed by Sunrisers Hyderabad. We were a little bit off from our absolute best. SRH had good top-order partnerships and they rotated the strike well, and a few of them made big scores. So that was the difference in the game," said Ponting in the post-match press conference.
Talking about DC's top-order batsmen, Ponting said, "If one of those guys make a big score (60 or 70+), then we probably win the game."
The Capitals had won the toss and opted to chase, but even as Shreyas Iyer said after the game that the wicket had become two-paced in the second innings, Ponting believes that the conditions were "better" when DC batted.
"It looked like a really good wicket. As we saw with the new ball, there wasn't a lot of bounce. Warner and Bairstow played the conditions really well early on. They got the boundaries when they needed to, ran the twos exceptionally well," said Ponting.
"The wicket might have been slightly better in the second innings which is disappointing for us, having won the toss and deciding to chase. We felt there might be a bit of dew in the ground and having just walked the outfield now, there was dew, so no excuses from us. We were outplayed."
Ponting also heaped praise on DC pacer Kagiso Rabada, who continued on his good form, taking two wickets in the game. "He's just the ultimate competitior. He loves pitting himself against some of the best batsmen in the world. He has performed exceptionally well for the Delhi Capitals," the former Australian captain said.
The Delhi Capitals head coach also added that the side had aimed to target SRH spinner Abhishek Sharma, but couldn't execute the plan well.
"We were looking to target Abhishek Sharma and he just snuck away from us a little bit. Rashid Khan dismissed Shreyas Iyer, which meant that Abhishek was able to get away with bowling to a new batsman. We targeted his third and fourth over, but didn't get as many as we needed to. The game started to slip away from that moment," said Ponting.
"They executed their yorkers better than we did."
