Chennai, May 11 (IANS): Delhi Capitals head coach Ricky Ponting has admitted that his batters played too many dot balls in the middle overs against Chennai Super Kings, which led to them crashing to their seventh loss of IPL 2023.

On a sluggish pitch at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, Delhi lost their top three batters inside four overs and then Chennai's spinners put on a strong chokehold, leading to the visitors ending up at 140/8 in 20 overs, losing the game by 27 runs.

"We lost two early, then we lost three early, and then the spinners came on, and we didn't show any urgency against the spinners in overs 7 to 16. I was just going through the stats in that phase, and we only scored around 50 (44) runs in that period."

"There were about 34 dot balls in the middle of the game. You are never going to win chasing a score if there is that many dot balls through the middle phase," said Ponting in the post-match press conference.

Ponting also pointed out that Delhi have lost a lot of wickets in the first over of their batting innings in IPL 2023, something which he feels has contributed to the downfall of the team in many instances.

"I think that is the fifth, sixth, maybe seventh time this season where we have lost a wicket in the first over of the game. On one occasion, we lost two wickets in the first over of the game. That is clearly an area that we haven't got right, and it is pretty obvious where the game was lost," he added.

Ponting further remarked that Indian batters in the side haven't really stepped in to get big runs for the side.

"Manish (Pandey) started the tournament really well. We were really happy with the way he prepared and got himself ready for the first few games which had some impact on us. Prithvi (Shaw), the fact that he is not playing, is an indication that he did not perform as we wanted him to at the start of the tournament."

"Unlike us, we've been changing the batting order around quite a bit. We've got a bit more thinking to do. We've tried all of our Indian batters at some stage in the tournament. No one has really grabbed the opportunity with both hands yet."

Now at the bottom of the points table, Delhi's next game in IPL 2023 will be against Punjab Kings at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Saturday.