Ricky Ponting had arrived in Dubai last week and oversaw the first training session of the Delhi Capitals players after spending six days in quarantine.
Ricky Ponting. (Photo: IANS)
Delhi Capitals coach Ricky Ponting held his first training session with the players in United Arab Emirates, ahead of the upcoming edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) on Tuesday.
Ponting had arrived in Dubai last week and oversaw the first training session of the Delhi Capitals players after spending six days in quarantine. He had arrived later than the rest of the squad that came from India.
DC said that Ponting met the squad and conducted the training session at the ICC Academy in Dubai. The rest of the team, meanwhile, had started training last week on Saturday.
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The team also posted a video of the beginning of the practice session in their Instagram handle.
“Good to be outside after a week. Everyone has come to the ground after five-six months,” said DC assistant coach Mohammad Kaif in the video.
“So (we will) take it easy. We will still maintain the intensity but we don’t want to push too much, that is the plan.”
The 2020 season of the IPL will be played for 53 days from September 19 to November 10 across three venues in the UAE — Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, and Dubai.
The final match will be played on a Tuesday, to make it the first-ever IPL to have its final on a weekday. The matches this season will also start 30 minutes before their original time of 4 PM and 8 PM.
The IPL 2020, which was scheduled to be played from March 29 this year, was earlier postponed to April 15 before it was suspended again due to the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, after the International Cricket Council (ICC) formally announced the postponement of the T20 World Cup, the BCCI capitalised on the opportunity to stage the IPL during the time the T20 World Cup was dated to take place.
But with the coronavirus situation escalating in India with each passing day, the Indian board decided to move the tournament out of the country. It is believed, UAE was chosen keeping in mind their prior experience of hosting a limited part of the tournament in 2014.
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