IPL 2019 | Mohammad Kaif accuses KKR and KXIP of misusing substitution rules

The Delhi Capitals assistant coach Mohammad Kaif has pointed out towards the unethical practice of replacing slow fielders with agile ones by Kolkata Knight Riders and Kings XI Punjab in the matches played against his side on March 30 and April 1 respectively. He also suggested the umpires to take action against such practices, which could be one of the reasons for the slow over rate, an issue that has been plaguing this year’s Indian Premier League.

“For example, DC versus KKR match, (Andrew) Russell went out, Rinku Singh came to field. Piyush Chawla quickly bowled his four overs and went out and Rinku again came back. We have seen that in the last Punjab game as well. Sarfaraz Khan didn’t come to field after being hit on the gloves. I don’t know if he is injured. Karun Nair came to field and he took a good catch at long on of Ingram. Teams are playing smart and making changes which are not right to me. We will bring it up with the umpires,” the 38-year-old said.

Kaif put the blame on the teams for taking too much time to think resulting in a slow over rate.

“Teams defending are taking too much time I think, I don’t understand all these planning in the IPL, there is an hour long meeting and also a lot of planning even at the field. We as support staff want to keep the planning as less as possible otherwise it gets confusing,” the former India player said.

“It is still early in the tournament. We have four points, last match we should have won, right now we all have a broken heart but that is IPL for you, we need to move on,” he expressed.

The Delhi based franchise relies heavily on its Indian batsmen Shikhar Dhawan, Prithvi Shaw, Shreyas Iyer and Rishabh Pant to form the crux of the top order. The Uttar Pradesh player was delighted with the performances of the four, Dhawan and Iyer have started well in all the matches, whereas, Shaw and Pant have even won them two matches. The finisher’s duties have been handed to the South African duo of Colin Ingram and Chris Morris who made a late entry into the tournament. Morris was run out for a duck in the game against KXIP but Kaif is hopeful that the hard-hitting all-rounder will come good.

The Delhi Capitals are set to play Sunrisers Hyderabad at the Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi today. SRH have looked extremely dangerous, with the opening duo of Jonny Bairstow and David Warner showing peak form, with a century partnership in all the three matches until now. They even took it a notch higher with a double century stand in the match against Royal Challengers Bangalore. However, Kaif was quick to point out towards the down-side of the same, the fact that the middle order and lower order of the Orange Army becomes vulnerable, due to lack of match time.

“All the players of Hyderabad haven’t got the chance, the top order has done most of the job, it is not good for the team. So if we get (David) Warner and (Jonny) Bairstow early in the powerplay, we can be on top of the game,” the former Under-19 World Cup winning captain said.

“It is going to be a typical Kotla pitch. Here it is important to have power but if you compromise on timing, you get out and it becomes a low-scoring game,” he said.

Last but not the least, Kaif was very optimistic about his team’s chances as he maintained that the surface will make it difficult for SRH batsmen because they have been playing on the bouncy pitch of Hyderabad until now.