“I have seen tremendous growth from Abishek Porel in this IPL,” Ponting said in Bengaluru ahead of the match against RCB. “In fact, if you look back at the start of last season, obviously due to Rishabh’s accident we had to bring a few wicket-keepers into our team after the auction. We have tried a lot of players, players who have played, more senior players. But the moment I saw him, I knew he was a very special talent.
“I think that talent has started to shine, especially in the last six games. He’s starting to find out what IPL cricket is all about. He’s taken on a few different roles as well. In the first game of the season for us, he was batted at number 9. He came in as a batsman impact player and made 10 balls there and now we see him starting to bat and he is getting better and better with each game.
“There’s been a lot of praise for him. I think he’s a very, very good young player. Obviously we’ll see him with the gloves tomorrow too when Rishabh isn’t there and then we’ll see how we can shape our team with our batting order and things like that.” At the end of the year, I would be surprised if he doesn’t finish first again, because he played really well and I think he has a really bright future.”
Porel has hit 31 fours so far this season despite scoring just 267 runs to Pant’s 413 runs. This is the joint-most for DC along with Pant. So far this IPL season, he has played only four matches in the tournament. It was all in 2023. He scored 33 runs with a strikeout rate of -106.45. He was one of DC’s retained players in this IPL.
‘Fraser-McGurk, along with Head and Abhishek, are among the standout powerplay batsmen in this IPL’
Fraser-McGurk was selected as a replacement for DC just ahead of IPL 2024 after fast bowler Lungi Ngidi was ruled out. Fraser-McGurk has since reset the T20 batting template in the powerplay in many ways, much like Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma have done for Sunrisers Hyderabad this season. Fraser-McGurke scored 309 runs with four half-centuries at 235.87 and an average of 44.14. That strike rate is much better than Abhishek’s 205.64 and Head’s 201.89.
“I didn’t expect Jake to be selected initially,” Ponting said about his absence from the T20 World Cup squad. “It was only a few weeks ago that he turned up here as a substitute and the furthest thing from his mind was probably actually getting a chance to make the World Cup squad. That was how thrilling he was in this IPL. Some of the things he did – I think he has achieved three 20-ball fifties in this tournament, so he has been the standout powerplay batsman throughout this tournament along with Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma.
“I saw a few things he said on the day the squad was announced or the day after. He wasn’t surprised that he wasn’t in the squad, and he wasn’t disappointed that he wasn’t there. I’m sure he was. He would have liked to have been in it, but he was left out. I think he’s more surprised by the name than the fact that he’s focused like all of us right now and making sure we’re ready for tomorrow and what we can do to be better today. It’s about making sure we’re ready to play our best cricket tomorrow.”
