Disappointed Fleming says Pune Supergiants struggling to find right combination
Dec 23, 2018 at 11:08 AM
On a pitch which was quite difficult to bat on, MS Dhoni’s team Rising Pune Supergiants (RPS) had put up a decent total of 160 on the scoreboard. Dhoni had enough options with the ball to defend the competitive target, and yet Rising Pune Supergiants couldn’t hold back the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at the MCA Stadium in Pune on Sunday.
According to a disappointed Fleming, they are still finding it difficult to find the right combination since the win over defending champions Mumbai Indians in the tournament opener which has forced the IPL newcomers languishing at the second last spot in the eight-team standings. Fleming said it’s always difficult to build a new team, “We just need to move on. As a new team we are trying to develop a culture and some camaraderie, it does take a lot more work. So we are working hard but it’s tough. We are just trying to find a combination.
Because we are new team, we are trying to understand what combinations will work. It’s not ideal but if we win 2 or 3 games in a row we probably will settle down. We are conscious about it and are just working on the combinations that will give us the results we need.”
The ball was even turning square on several occasions. Things were getting really hard for the KKR batsmen when the second innings entered the middle overs. But, Suryakumar Yadav, Andre Russell and Yusuf Pathan contributed with the bat to ultimately take their side over the line leaving Dhoni with a frustrating fact of losing four t20 matches in a row for the first time.
RPS also suffered their fourth straight defeat in this year’s IPL with coach Stephen Fleming far from happy with his team’s sluggish performance.
Fleming believes the total was obviously defendable, as the wicket was not at all an easy one to bat on. The former New Zealand captain also said his team leaked way too many easy runs.
“160 was a good to very good score on this surface. We saw there was a lot of assistance for the slow bowlers, but we still did not adjust. We did not use that spin to create enough pressure. We kept Kolkata in the game,” Fleming was quoted as saying by CricInfo.
“They hit well at crucial times, but our fielding and the bowling… the slow bowling in particular towards the middle overs was left wanting and that is disappointing. 161 was easily defendable.
“I thought today’s performance was poor, performance in the field was I thought very poor. I was pretty angry with the way things went today so my morale needs a bit of boost.”
R Ashwin, who has always been MS Dhoni’s go-to man, surprisingly couldn’t able to make an impact in this crucial match despite the wicket being bowlers-friendly. The most concerning fact is that he has not been finishing his quota of four overs in most of the matches in this IPL, and Fleming thinks the offspinner needs to find his rhythm again, and it better be very soon.
“I would have thought that he could have played a key role. But in terms of that line in the first six overs, he just struggled to get to grips with the pace and line he wanted to bowl. So we have to look at that but if we get conditions like that again I think he himself would concede he can be better,” Fleming further said.