Punjab Kings team’s new head coach Ricky Ponting faces many big challenges.
The 18th season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) will be played in the year 2025, for which all the 10 franchises have started preparations. In this episode, Punjab Kings, who finished 9th in the points table after the league stage matches in IPL 2024, have decided to change their coaching setup. The franchise appointed former Australian captain Ricky Ponting as the new head coach of their team for the upcoming season, who will replace Trevor Bayliss. At the same time, Ricky Ponting was playing the responsibility of head coach for the Delhi Capitals team for the last 7 years, which he ended just 2 months ago. For Ponting, taking the decision to become the head coach of Punjab Kings is no less than wearing a crown of thorns because Punjab Kings (Kings XI Punjab), which has been a part of the IPL since its first season till now, has not been able to win this trophy even once.
Expressing his happiness on Ricky Ponting being appointed as the new head coach of Punjab Kings, franchise CEO Satish Menon said in a statement that we have decided to appoint Ricky as the new head coach of our team for the next four seasons. His experience will be very important in which he has a good knowledge of international cricket, which will also be very good for us in the upcoming auction.
On the other hand, Ponting said about this new responsibility that I want to thank the Punjab Kings team for entrusting me with this responsibility. I am very excited about this new challenge. I have spoken to the team management and owners in which the goal of all of us is to take the team forward. We want to give happiness to all those fans who have constantly supported us and I want to assure you that in the next season you will see a changed Punjab Kings team.
However, despite this, this responsibility is not going to be easy for Ricky Ponting as the new head coach of the Punjab Kings team. In such a situation, we are going to tell you about those 5 challenges that Ricky Ponting will have to face now after becoming the head coach.
Preparing a better strategy for the auction
A mega player auction will be organized for the IPL 2025 season, for which the retention and other rules have not been announced by the BCCI so far. The biggest challenge for Ricky Ponting will be which player he decides to retain in the team. There were some players who performed very well for the Punjab Kings team last season. Apart from Harshal Patel, who won the Purple Cap, there are uncapped Indian players Shashank Singh and Ashutosh Sharma. At the same time, apart from Arshdeep Singh, wicketkeeper batsman Jitesh Sharma is also present in the team as a star player. In such a situation, it is not going to be an easy task for Ricky Ponting to decide on the names of the players to be retained.
Searching for a new captain
Punjab Kings team has been a part of this biggest T20 league in the world since the first season of IPL, but due to their poor performance, there has been a change in captaincy from season to season. In 17 seasons, there have been many big changes in the leadership of Punjab Kings, in which a total of 16 players have captained this team. In this, Adam Gilchrist has captained the maximum number of 34 matches from the year 2011 to the season of 2013. This clearly shows that the team has always been in search of a better captain. In the last IPL season, Shikhar Dhawan was the captain of the team, but due to being unfit, Sam Curran took over the captaincy of the team in most of the matches in his place, but there was no improvement in the performance of Punjab Kings. Now after Dhawan’s retirement, the biggest challenge for Punjab Kings in the upcoming season will be to find a new captain, the biggest responsibility of which will be of Ricky Ponting.
Team performance, did not reach playoffs after 2014 season
In the year 2008, when the first season of IPL was played, Punjab Kings, which played under the name of Kings XI Punjab at that time, impressed everyone with their performance and reached the semi-finals. After this, the fans expected that they would get to see a better performance in the next season, but the exact opposite was seen in which Punjab Kings could not reach the playoffs even once till the 2013 season. After this, in the 2014 IPL season, Punjab Kings managed to reach the final under the captaincy of George Bailey, but here they had to face defeat against Kolkata Knight Riders. From here, the performance of Punjab Kings saw such a decline season after season that till now the team has not been able to make its place in the top-4 even once after the league stage matches were over. This is going to be a big challenge for Ricky Ponting as the head coach so that there is consistency in the performance of the team and victory is seen because in the last season, there was more continuity of defeat. In many matches, despite coming close to victory at one time, they had to face defeat.
Buying better foreign players in auction
Till now, the dominance of English and Australian foreign players has been seen more in the Punjab Kings team. In which players like Sam Curran, Liam Livingstone and Jonny Bairstow were present in the team last season itself. Now the list of which players are retained in the mega auction will be revealed later. Making a better strategy for the auction will also be a big challenge for Ricky Ponting because Punjab Kings will have to include such players according to their home ground who can prove to be a match winner for the team. In IPL, their home ground matches are very important for all the teams, in which Chennai Super Kings is a big example, defeating them at their home under any circumstances is not an easy task at all.
Involve better people in the coaching setup
After Ricky Ponting became the head coach, it is certain that there will be more changes in the coaching setup of Punjab Kings, in which it is expected that Ponting will include his favorite people. Last season, the fast bowling coach of the Punjab team was Charles Langveldt, while the spin bowling coach was Sunil Joshi, apart from this, the Head of Cricket Development was Sanjay Bangar. In such a situation, everyone will keep an eye on who Ponting includes in the coaching setup because from the point of view of Indian conditions, having a former Indian player in the coaching setup can prove to be beneficial for the franchise.
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