IPL 2019 | Spinners will be very important on slow Kotla wicket, says Delhi Capitals’ spin bowling coach Samuel Badree
Samuel Badree feels the Kotla wicket has been on the slower side of late and their spinners will have a very important role to play in their next encounter against Kings XI Punjab on Saturday. Delhi Capitals lost their previous encounter against Mumbai Indians on the same surface on Thursday.
A 40-run loss to Mumbai Indians at Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium on Thursday came as a set-back for Delhi Capitals, but the JSW and GMR co-owned franchise will look to set things right when they take on Kings XI Punjab in their tenth match of IPL 2019 on Saturday here at Kotla. The previous league encounter between the two teams ended in a disappointing 14-run defeat for the Capitals, but Spin Bowling Coach Samuel Badree believes that his team will start will a clean slate when they take the field on Saturday evening.
He said, “We start afresh tomorrow as it is a new match. In this tournament, we play everybody twice so you don’t want to think too much about the first match whether you win or lose that game. You do take the positives, and look to plan for the upcoming match, and try to execute those plans on the field. It is important that you adapt to the conditions quickly, and on the day, in the moment, you need to try to execute your skills better than the opposition. If we can do that, we can secure the two points comfortably tomorrow.”
Speaking about what role the spinners could play on the Kotla pitch and what went wrong against MI in Thursday’s defeat, Badree said, “I think the spinners will be very important, especially here at Kotla we have seen that the pitch is a little bit slow. There has been variable bounce and we saw that against Mumbai Indians as well. Their spinners were very crucial through the power-play and the middle overs. I felt they strangled us during the overs that their spinners bowled. In the first 13 overs of our innings, I think they bowled at least 10 overs of spin, so it was a lesson for us. In terms of overall team selection, we may have missed a trick there. But our bowlers had done a great job in our last game in very tough conditions in Hyderabad so we were 100% backing them. But certainly the team selection is something to consider going into tomorrow’s match against Kings XI Punjab.”
The 38-year-old Trinidadian also felt that his team has been paying too much attention to the Kotla pitch. He said, “Yes, maybe we are thinking too much about the pitch and the away teams who do not have much time to analyse the pitch are adjusting better. I think we just need to play good cricket on the day. As we saw, Mumbai Indians were able to score close to 170, and that game against KKR we chased down 180-odd, so maybe we are reading too much into it, and it should be a matter of us going out there and adjusting and adapting quickly, accessing what a good total is and making necessary changes in our approach. I do not think it is a 130-140 pitch, I still feel it is a 160-170 pitch as long as we can apply ourselves and set up a solid foundation. I do think it is application more than anything and maybe mentally we may have been giving the pitch more credit than we should. Therefore, it is something that we have discussed and we will look to come good tomorrow.”
The 40-run defeat to Mumbai means that the Delhi Capitals have their work cut-out to make it to the play-offs, but Badree insists that his team are not looking too far ahead of themselves. “It does become challenging for us now but it is important to stay calm and stay in the moment, and not think too far ahead. The moment we start to think about the play-offs and how many games we need to win to get there, it becomes that more difficult and we put unnecessary pressure on ourselves. We are looking to take one game at a time, and just want to focus on the job at hand. We focus on our position on that given day against the team that we playing on that day, and in this case, it is Kings XI, whom we should have beaten at their home ground, given that we dominated for 37 of the 40 overs. So I think in this game, we focus on that, learning from the last result and improving where we need to,” said Badree.
The corresponding fixture last season saw Kings XI Punjab register a narrow 4-run victory in a low-scoring encounter. Batting first, the team from Punjab put on a total of 143-8 as Trent Boult and Avesh Khan picked up two wickets each to restrict the visiting side. However, in reply, Shreyas Iyer’s fighting 57 off 45 balls could not be enough as Ankit Rajpoot (2-23) and Mujeeb Ur Rehman (2-25) made sure that Delhi could only manage a score of 139-8 in their 20 overs.
The two teams have faced each other on 23 previous occasions which has seen Punjab register 14 victory while Delhi has managed only 9. However, at the Feroz Shah Kotla, both the teams have won 5 matches each out of the 10 games that they have played.
