At the toss, a question lit up the faces of both captains – Ajinkya Rahane and Pat Cummins – for different reasons.
‘What is your assessment of the pitch?’
Cummins laughed, hesitated a bit and said, “It looks like a good surface,” then added in defence “But I am very bad at reading it.”
Rahane kept repeating the smile-hesitation pattern but couldn’t stop himself from admitting it. you should get what you want.” The bitterness between the pitch curator of Eden Gardens and Kolkata Knight Riders was over, and the home team was offered a pitch that had not been watered for the last five days. The dry surface was intended to help their power, spin attack.
But even before KKR’s spinners came into action on Thursday evening, the fortunes of the tournament had tilted in KKR’s favour. After scoring 200 on a slow surface, their pacers – Harshit Rana and Vaibhav Arora – had Sunrisers Hyderabad reduced to 3 for 9 in three overs.
SRH got off to their worst start since adopting their boom-or-bust approach. Despite some middle-order fightback, they were unable to get to a position where they could pose a serious threat to KKR’s total. The best part came with 94 required at the end of the 14th over when Heinrich Klaasen made a move.
The team, which had confidently indicated it would chase a total of 300 this season and got close to it in the first game, has failed more often than it has got going in the last three matches.
The three big defeats have left SRH at the bottom of the table. After a poor show with both bat and ball, bowling coach James Franklin claims there are still not enough reasons to change the batting plan.
“You don’t want to underestimate the natural intent of our top order and the way they bat, because we have seen a lot of that last year, when everything is going well and it hasn’t worked out well in the last few games, it’s working surprisingly well for them this time around
“I think everybody’s opinion was that we have picked up from where we left off last year with the style of batting we have done. Although it may not have worked in the last two games – because we got close to 200 in the second game as well – it may have been because of the way we play sometimes and particularly the way our batsmen play. We want them to want to play.”
“So yeah, although it hasn’t been our best thing in the last two games, there is enough confidence in our group and the individuals in our group that we can go out and play aggressively, I think we know that and we have shown that last year or even before that from SRH’s perspective.” However, the recent failures of the batsmen have highlighted the long-standing concerns in their other department – bowling.
Barring the rare failure of their top order on Thursday, the situation they faced so early in the run chase also had an impact on their performance in the death overs, wherein they conceded 78 runs in the last five overs. This not only changed the momentum, pushing KKR to a score that was out of SRH’s reach, but they bounced back from that point in the run-chase .Venkatesh Iyer admitted that the SRH pacers were unable to capitalize on the conditions on a surface where the ball stopped and held a bit, making it difficult to make shots. He bowled too full too often and became predictable with his variations. Venkatesh took full advantage of his kindness and allowed him to throw the bat around while KKR still had Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh and Moeen Ali. According to SRH bowling coach James Franklin, the SRH bowlers had a combination of poor assessment as well as execution. “I mean, 65 [66] off the last four overs probably shows that we didn’t bowl well,” admitted Franklin. “I think KKR were 84/2 at half-time. If we had played the last 10 overs better, we might have restricted them to 170, 180 runs. “We didn’t get it right, the execution wasn’t right and you know, sometimes as a coach you sit there and it’s OK, could we have done things a little bit better, could we have been a little more adventurous technically and with certain aspects of it.” Before we leave again on Sunday, the conversations we will have in the coming days
“I think it’s a reflection between me and the players out there and we’re definitely going to try to come back better with that execution. But I think we had pretty good first three quarters of our bowling innings up to that point. Again, there are many things you can look back on and wish you had time for again. That’s the nature of the game.”
This is not a new concern for SRH though, or a rare blip in their otherwise stellar performance. Recently, the cracks in SRH’s bowling attack have been overshadowed by the success of their explosive batsmen. Last season they had the second worst economy rate (behind Delhi Capitals) and the worst average among all the bowling groups in the competition. With 19 wickets in four matches this season, they currently have the worst economy rate (10.83) and their average of 41.15 is just ahead of Rajasthan Royals (46.69). in some ways, this may be due to the nature of their home field surface. Similarly, his batting nature prompts opposing teams to take a similar approach to retaliation without using force. And on a surface that offers limited help to the bowlers, SRH bowlers face the same treatment their batsmen do to the opposition bowlers.
But if they want to continue with their ultra-aggressive approach with the bat despite the recent failures pointed out by Franklin, the bowlers will have to face the opposition onslaught. And they will soon have to figue out a way to improve their game on days like Thursday if they don’t win on their own, when bookmakers could face a collapse due to their high-risk, high-reward approach. Despite the recent disappointments, Franklin is hopeful that the team can turn things around in the coming days. “There is definitely some disappointment in the group, but we are still in the early days of this IPL and we have a lot of great players in our group who can definitely turn it around. So yes, it was a frustrating day,” he said