Delhi Capitals head coach Ricky Ponting admitted there weren’t many positives to take out of his team’s 91-run defeat against Chennai Super Kings at the DY Patil Stadium here.

Chasing 208, Capitals folded for 117 for its sixth defeat this season. A COVID-19 scare didn’t allow for ideal preparations on Sunday but that wasn’t an excuse for the poor performance, felt Ponting.

“We’ve let ourselves down today. A lot of our bowling wasn’t up to the mark and certainly the batting was very, very poor. To lose a game by 91 runs and put a huge dent in our run-rate means we have to bounce back very strongly in our next game,” Ponting said.

Ponting was still upbeat about Capitals’ chances of making it to the playoffs. The team currently sits fifth in the points table, with three matches remaining.

“Three wins will obviously get us to the eight wins that might be good enough to get in, and we might just need a couple of other results to go our way, maybe one more big win that might help our run-rate and then who knows who might make the final,” Ponting said.

“That’s all we can think about; what’s happened has happened, we got to look to the future. We’ve got to find a way to regroup and rebound off a bad performance.”

CSK will come back stronger next year – Conway

Player of the match Devon Conway said the Super Kings were a strong squad and that they will come back stronger next year.

“I think we’ve got a very strong team, a very strong squad. The results perhaps haven’t gone our way this year. We’re not out of the competition, though. But we have some seriously classy players in the set-up with good experience, and really good young guys coming through. There’s no doubt that we’ll come back stronger next year.”

Explaining the circumstances that enabled him to travel to South Africa for a week and get married in the middle of the IPL, Conway said, “It was due to the combination of the team. We needed to find a good balance; we were a couple of bowlers short – Deepak Chahar was injured, Adam Milne was injured as well. For us, it was important to fulfil those gaps as best as possible. That meant we needed to carry an extra bowler as the overseas option.

“It was quite understandable; the message was clear from Stephen Fleming that I needed to make sure I was ready for any opportunity that might present itself down in the future. The fact that I needed to be away for a handful of games to be married [made it suitable for me to leave]. It was good to support the guys from the sidelines and I was lucky to be able to get back to South Africa to get married.”