Rishabh Pant is not overawed with the responsibility of captaining the Delhi Capitals franchise at the young age of 23. That is because he has enough wise men around him to talk to.

Pant has graduated to captaincy after last season’s skipper Shreyas Iyer was ruled out with a shoulder injury.

“I have been talking to the senior players like Shikhar Dhawan, Ravichandran Ashwin and Ajinkya Rahane about the fields we can set and other strategic decisions for the team,” Pant was quoted as saying in a media release ahead of the Capitals’ opening game of IPL 2021 against Chennai Super Kings.

“I have been talking to (head coach) Ricky (Ponting) and our bowling coach James Hopes as well. There’s a good mix of seniors and juniors in our squad and I think with the help of Ricky, we can do something different this year.”

Being a wicketkeeper, Pant has a fair bit of knowledge about setting fields and he hopes to make use of that experience.

“I haven’t thought about the fact that it'’ my first match as captain in the IPL. I am just going to keep things simple and give my 100 per cent. You get a good idea about setting fields as a wicketkeeper and now, as the captain, I will be making the changes in the field directly. So, there'’ not going to be much of a difference for me,” said Pant.

Coach Ponting stressed on his players having the “right attitude” in pursuit of a better result that last year, when they had finished runners-up.

“Although we’ve got a slightly different squad, we expect to play better as a group and achieve some better results. So, for us, Chennai Super Kings is just game one. We need to approach it with the right attitude and play well.

“Hopefully, we win this game and move onto the second game. But we know that we’ll have to play well to win.”

The former Australia captain also spoke about their opponents. “The Super Kings have been one of the most successful teams in the history of the IPL. They have got a great leader and a great squad of players,” Ponting said.