These games will teach Chahal and Yadav how to handle pressure, says Dinesh Karthik

10/23/2017

Dinesh Karthik has defended wrist spinners Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav’s poor display calling it a rare occurrence and believes that it will teach them to handle pressure in the future. Karthik also blamed the changing nature of the pitch during the game for India’s poor batting display.

One of the main reasons for India’s defeat to New Zealand in the first ODI was their bowling performance. The wrist spinning duo of Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav, who were a constant threat during the Australia series, taking a collective 13 wickets, were rendered totally ineffective against the Kiwis.

While Kuldeep claimed 1 for 64 off his 10 overs, Chahal went wicketless whilst giving away 51 runs, which made the chase of 281 runs all the easier for the visitors. Karthik, who was a new addition to the squad after sitting out against Sri Lanka and Australia, believes that these games will be good lessons and the youngsters will come back stronger.

“I think these are the kind of games that make you mentally tougher as a bowler. That is what they would like to look at it, this is a great learning curve for them and that is the whole point of playing bilateral (series). These are the kind of games that are going to help them stand up to pressure, learn how to handle pressure when the wicket is probably not helping them so much,” Kartik told reporters.

“They are going to learn and they are very young, they have bowled really well till now so I do not see them backing out at all, I see them coming harder every single game.”

New Zealand are known for doing their homework diligently and it reflected on Sunday when Tom Latham was seen taking Yadav and Chahal to the cleaners quite comfortably. However, Karthik believes that it was the pitch, which turned batting-friendly in the second-half, was the main reason for the easy chase.

“I think the wicket was very sticky. It was not easy to drive; a lot of balls were going uppish in the air… It was not coming on to the bat really well. It was two different wickets to be very honest, it was not that easy to score runs; you could see the ball going to the left and right to mid-off and the cover in the air so we were not able to time the ball as well. It got much better to bat in the second innings, credit to them they made use of it,” he said.

India will be looking to level the series in the second ODI, which takes place at the Maharashtra Cricket Association Ground in Pune on October 25.