David Warner had missed Delhi Capitals’ previous game against Gujarat Titans die to an injury.

New Delhi: Delhi Capitals head coach Ricky Ponting revealed that opener David Warner still needs to level up his fitness by 15 to 20 per cent to be available for selection against Sunrisers Hyderabad on Saturday. Warner, who didn’t have a worthy run in IPL 2024 so far, missed the last match due to a knuckle injury. However, on Friday, he was seen batting at the nets and also hit some balls into the stands while facing throwdowns, thus giving the impression that the Australian is toiling hard to attain full fitness.

Although Delhi Capitals want Warner to be match fit as soon as possible, Ponting opined the southpaw is expected to show improvement from Friday. “David did a fitness test on game day in which he got close. He’s probably sort of 85 or 90% a couple days ago. We’d expect that there would be a little bit more improvement from him today.

“But he will have to do a lot of batting today against some fast bowling stuff to make sure that the pain is not there anymore,” Ponting replied when asked about the opener’s update. With two clinical back-to-back wins under their belt, Delhi Capitals have found their mojo back and look to complete a hat-trick of wins against Sunrisers Hyderabad at Arun Jaitley Stadium on Saturday.

It will be Delhi Capitals first actual home game this season. Earlier in the season, Visakhapatnam acted as Delhi Capitals’ home in a couple of matches. Speaking about playing the home match in Delhi for the first time in the season, Ponting said, “We’re really excited to be back. It’s the home ground. We want to make sure this becomes a fortress for us when opposition teams come here. So, we’re excited to be here and hopefully, we can start our home campaign well tomorrow.”

“On the back of the WPL, we wanted to ensure that we had some grass back on and the wickets could potentially play a bit better than they have done for us in the last couple of years,” he further added. On the other hand, Sunrisers Hyderabad have broken the highest total record twice this season.

They are currently placed fourth in the points table with four wins, two losses in six matches. Speaking about the match-up against SRH, Ponting said, “We don’t mind having a shootout tomorrow if it’s a high-scoring game, so be it.”

“We know and expect that they’re going to play the way they’ve played so far in the tournament which has been going hard at the top of the order with the bat, and trying to post a big first innings total. So, we’re happy to try and match them in that. We think we’ve got as good a batting line-up if not better batting line-up than theirs.”