Rishabh Pant has made some dubious calls as the captain of Delhi Capitals, but the franchise’s head coach, Ricky Ponting, has full faith in the youngster’s abilities.

“Absolutely, no doubt in my mind that Rishabh, even in the last season, was the right choice for captain. Rishabh did a terrific job with the team after he took over from Shreyas (Iyer),” Ponting said during the media conference after Delhi lost by five wickets against Mumbai Indians to be knocked out of the playoffs race.

“...he is just a young man and still learning captaincy. Being captain of a T20 team, especially in the IPL, which is a high-pressure tournament, is not an easy thing to do and, unfortunately, every single thing you do will be scrutinised. He certainly got my full backing.”

Pant’s decision not to go for DRS when Mumbai’s Tim David nicked the first delivery he faced backfired on Delhi on Saturday.

Ponting said he was “gutted” to see the match slip away but didn’t blame Pant for the loss.

“It is always hard to put a finger on one single aspect of the game. Top of the order, our batting was poor, we were four down for 40, which is not the ideal way to start a T20 game, specially big games which you have to win,” he said.

“Obviously, Tim David played well. He was probably out first ball but there are so many aspects of the game we will be disappointed with. The players need to learn from games like that. I feel pretty gutted that the game slipped through out of our hands.”

Summing up the season, Ponting gave more marks to his team’s bowlers than the batsmen. “…our bowling group has probably done a better job on a whole than our batting group. Our batting group has been really inconsistent.”

(Written with PTI inputs)