Delhi Capitals coach Ricky Ponting said he felt "almost embarrassed" by the "unacceptable" bowling and fielding performance his side put in against Kolkata Knight Riders in Visakhapatnam, as they lost by 106 runs after conceding the second-highest total in IPL history.
"It's pretty hard to assess right now," Ponting said. "I mean, I was almost embarrassed with our first half of the game today, to concede that many runs [272]. I think we bowled 17 wides [15] and it took us two hours to bowl the overs. We were two overs behind again, which means the guys bowling the last two overs only get to bowl with four fieldsmen outside the circle.
"There are a lot of things that happened today in this game that are unacceptable and there's a lot of things that we'll talk about as a group tonight that we have to fix immediately to go forward in this tournament.
"There will be some good open discussions in the change-rooms tonight, for sure… There's no excuses from our side whatsoever. We've been outplayed and outplayed badly, and we need to go back and have a good talk about where we went wrong today."
The Capitals twice failed to review not-out caught-behind decisions which would have been overturned, but Ponting said they had bigger problems to worry about. "They are little things. There are other bigger concerns for us, with the way that we bowled, some of the field placing we had set, and just how long it's taking us to get around.
"You can't afford to do that. No other team's doing it. We've been two overs down, two games in a row, so that's more than 10 minutes down going into the last couple of overs of our bowling innings. It probably didn't cost us today, because they were probably still going to get 250 anyway. But going forward in the tournament, it'll definitely cost us somewhere if we can't fix it."
The Knight Riders racked up 88 for 1 in the first six overs, thanks primarily to Sunil Narine's pinch-hitting. Ponting said his side were never in the contest: "Our start didn't help - even thinking about the first ball of the game [four byes awarded despite replays indicating Rishabh Pant had dropped a thin edge from Phil Salt]. They got off to a flying start in the Powerplay.
"If that happens at the start of a game, then you're always trying to fight your way back into the game, and they didn't allow us to do that today. They were relentless, the way they kept going at us after that start. The youngster [Angkrish Raghuvanshi], to come in early at No. 3, I thought he played really well.
"That allowed [Andre] Russell and those guys to come in and play the way that they always play. They had wickets in hand, so they could keep going hard. They did lots of things really well, but we've got to be very critical of ourselves [and] of our own performance, and we've got to look at ways to get better for the next game."
The Capitals sit ninth in the league table after one win and three defeats in their first four games. On Sunday, they face winless Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede Stadium, who are the only team below them in the points table after three defeats from three.