Daniel Vettori, the head coach of Sunrisers Hyderabad, called his team’s bowling performance against Royal Challengers Bengaluru “poor” and acknowledged that they gave Virat Kohli and Devdutt Padikkal far too many chances to score in IPL opener.
The Hyderabad team was unable to stop the raiding Padikkal and Kohli after amassing 201/9 in the season-opening match on Saturday, and RCB easily won in just 15.4 overs.
“You have to get a good start (with the ball), which we did against (Phil) Salt, but then I just think we weren’t at our best with the ball. We weren’t as disciplined as we needed to be, and we gave a lot of scoring opportunities to Virat and Padikkal, who played exceptionally well,” Vettori said in the post-match press conference.
“We should have been able to maintain a little bit more (discipline) after getting that important wicket of Salt. So, it was a very good batting performance by RCB and one of our poorer bowling performances,” he added.
According to Vettori, SRH saw how brilliantly RCB pacer Jacob Duffy bowled, but the visiting bowlers were unable to carry out their strategies.
“I think we learned a lot from how RCB bowled and what was effective and what wasn’t, but we just weren’t able to implement that. You don’t want to have a rusty performance because of how important every game is in the IPL, particularly how to start.
“But today was one of our challenging bowling displays. We saw at the back end when we started to go back to our usual disciplines that we could actually be effective and take some wickets. But I think we just missed our lengths too much. Duffy in particular showed the length to bowl on that surface,” he said.
In upcoming games, Vettori believed that young bowlers like left-arm pacer David Payne and left-arm spinner Harsh Dubey will do well. Although the SRH team crossed 200, Vettori acknowledged that the total was woefully insufficient on a flat Chinnaswamy surface.
“I think 200, maybe a couple of years ago you’d think you’re safe for 200, but I think we understand where the game’s gone and how destructive that RCB batting line-up is.”
The Kiwi was subtly implying that he had high expectations for the SRH top-order, which includes Heinrich Klaasen, Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, and Ishan Kishan.
Both of the SRH openers fell cheaply, creating pressure on the middle order, even though Kishan and Klaasen played useful knocks.
Vettori stated that he still has a lot of faith in his batting lineup, though.
“We’ve got a lot of trust in our batting unit. You see Aniket (Verma) coming in at seven and being still able to be aggressive and put us in a position where we had a chance of a defendable total. I think the fact that we don’t expect Abhi and Trav to do it every game, we expect them to do it, win a couple of games a season, and we hand that off to all of the batting unit.
“So that top seven’s incredibly impressive, and even after that tough start to get to 200 shows the calibre of that group. I think they’ve just got confidence that they can go out there and play that style, and they understand that we need big scores because of the nature of the IPL these days,” he noted.
England all-rounder Brydon Carse was injured on the hand at nets, but Vettori said he is doing fine.
“He got hit on the hand in the nets when he was batting, on his bowling hand, cleared of any break, but quite a lot of swelling, and he tried to push for the game, but it was difficult for him to hold the ball. So he’s been improving, so we’re hoping he’s available for selection for Kolkata,” he added.
