IPL 2019 | Spinners will be very important on slow Kotla wicket, says Delhi Capitals’ spin bowling coach Samuel Badree

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 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.