The impact player rule in the IPL may hamper the development of all-rounders, but Delhi Capitals head coach Ricky Ponting said on Friday fans should be able to decide the future of the controversial system. Ponting has never been a staunch advocate of impact players, and the debate intensified after Rohit Sharma said in a recent YouTube podcast that he was not a “fan of the rule” because it hurt the development of all-rounders in India . “Look, I think, yesterday I read some very, very interesting answers to this question from Rohit Sharma. This impact player is taking the all-rounder out of the game a little bit,” Pang Ting said ahead of DC’s match against Sunrisers Hyderabad on Saturday.

“You know you can have your pro batsmen hit eight. Almost. But look, I think that’s probably not ideal for coaches and players, but I think you know a lot of what this game is trying to do Just to entertain people,” Ponting explained his point of view.

“T20 matches are an entertainment package and it’s better to ask the audience what they think about the influential players because if everyone likes the fact that the team scores 220 to 250 runs in many games and the audience likes to watch, then it should stay.

“But if audiences don’t like it that much, then there’s no reason why I can’t go back to it,” he added.

“Warner’s fit is about 85% to 90%”

David Warner, who missed the last game with a knuckle injury, was seen hitting the nets and hitting some balls into the stands when faced with deliveries.

Ponting said his fitness is close to 85 to 90 per cent.

“David did a fitness test on game day and the results were very close. A few days ago he was probably 85 or 90 per cent. We expected him to improve more today.

“But he has to bat a lot today against some fast bowling to make sure the pain is not there anymore,” Ponting said in reply to a query by PTI.

The coach was pleased with the venue for D.C.’s first home game.

“There’s a lot more grass across the entire square than we’ve seen here before. You know, that’s the main reason we gave up those later games in the WPL.

“We wanted to make sure the wickets performed maybe a little bit better than they did for us.”