Kolkata, April 4: Sunrisers Hyderabad bowling coach James Franklin feels that their bowlers failed to capitalise on their decision to bowl first against Kolkata Knight Riders as they conceded 78 runs in the last five overs at Eden Gardens on Thursday.
For KKR, Venkatesh Iyer amassed a 29-ball 60 laced with seven fours and three sixes while Angkrish Raghuvanshi scored 50 off 32 balls, including five fours and two sixes before Rinku Singh played a cameo knock of 32 not out in 17 balls to guide KKR to 200/6 in 20 overs.
Chasing 201, SRH batters failed miserably against the home side’s bowling with Vaibhav Arora and Varun Chakaravarthy bagging three scalps each to bundle out the visitors for 120 in 16.4 overs to win the encounter by 80 runs. It was SRH’s biggest defeat margin in the history of the IPL.
“It’s a slight combination of both the assessment and the execution. For example, the 65 runs off the last four overs probably reflect that we didn’t get it quite right. At the halfway stage, KKR were 84 or 85 for two. If we’d managed the back 10 overs right, we probably could have held them to 170-180, but we didn’t quite execute,” Franklin said in the post-match press conference.
“As a coach, sometimes you reflect and wonder, could we have done things better? Could we have been a bit braver in some aspects? Those are conversations we’ll have in the coming days before we go again on Sunday. It’s about reflecting, particularly with the players who were out there, and making sure we come back better, especially with our execution in the death overs,” he added.
Despite the batters’ lacklustre performance, Franklin backed the top order to fire in the next match against the Gujarat Titans on Sunday.
“Unfortunately, just in that power play we lost three wickets in the first three overs and that’s the style of players that we have up top; they’re aggressive, they’ve been lauded for a year and a year and a bit and rightfully so for the style of play that we played and just the last couple of games it hasn’t quite worked,” the bowling coach said.
“But we’ve got no doubts that our top order, our batters will come good and we’ve got every faith and trust in them coming into this next game that we play against Gujarat on Sunday. So look, it’s just one of those days where it hasn’t quite gone according to plan, there’s, obviously, some frustration within the group, but we’re still very early days in this IPL and we’ve got a lot of quality players within our group that can certainly turn it around,” he added.
–IANS
