Delhi Daredevils coach Ricky Ponting felt that Rishabh Pant's brilliant form hurt Glenn Maxwell in this year's Indian Premier League.

Maxwell, who was bought for Rs 9 crore by DD in the IPL 2018 auction, missed Delhi's first game due to personal reasons and when he came back, he found that his No. 4 position in the batting order was taken over by Rishabh Pant.

Since then, the duo's graph has only got in opposite directions. While Pant grabbed each opportunity presented to him with both hands, Maxwell failed to grab one as he was shuffled around the batting order and also found himself out of the team on one or two occasions. Speaking about the Victorian's poor run in IPL 2018, the DD coach said: "To be honest, the thing that hurt him most is how well Rishabh played. When we went to our auction table, we picked our group of players and I must admit before our first game, I had Glenn Maxwell penciled in as our No. 4 batsman for the tournament. He missed the first game for personal reasons with Aaron Finch's wedding, which meant that Rishabh batted at No. 4 in game one and played well."



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Maxwell only managed 169 runs from 12 innings with a highest score of 47 at a strike-rate of 140.83 while Pant smashed 684 runs from 14 matches at an average of 52.61. Pant, who hit one century and five fifties for DD this season, also holds the Orange Cap for the time being. And Punter was all praise for the diminutive wicket-keeper batsman.

"He has been outstanding, it has been an outstanding season for him. He is obviously wearing the Orange Cap right now. It's great recognition for the personal season that Rishabh's had but across the board, we needed more even contributions from a few more of our top-order batsmen if we were going to be a threat to challenge for the title this year," said Ponting.



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Speaking about Maxwell, Ponting went on to explain the thought process behind buying him for the Daredevils.

"I have spent a lot time with Glenn over the years. It was only a few weeks before this tournament came around that I spent the triangular series with him with the Australian team and did a lot of work with him there. He was actually man of the series in that tournament. So coming over here, he was in good form and having played a little bit of T20 cricket," added Ponting on Maxwell.

Maxwell will now have time to reflect on his performance in the IPL and get back to form when he takes the field for Australia in the upcoming tours of England and Zimbabwe. Finch, who has been in equally bad form for Kings XI Punjab, will lead the Aussies in the one-off T20 in England and a T20 tri-series in Zimbabwe that follows. Whereas Tim Paine will captain the side in the ODIs versus England.