Delhi Capitals spin bowling coach Samuel Badree feels that the spinners have a huge role to play on a slow pitch here and the team selection is going to be crucial ahead of their IPL match against Kings XI Punjab on Saturday.
Samuel Badree
Delhi lost to Mumbai by 40 runs here on Thursday night with the visiting team spinners playing a key role.
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"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," said Badree.
"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 percent backing them.
"But certainly the team selection is something to consider going into tomorrow's match against Kings XI Punjab," he added.
The first leg of the match between Delhi and Punjab ended in a disappointing 14-run defeat for the former, but Badree said his team will start with a clean slate.
"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," said the 38-year-old Trinidadian. Badree admitted that his team might be paying too much attention to the pitch.
"Yes, maybe we are thinking too much about the pitch and the away teams who do not have much time to analyse the pitch are adjusting better. I think we just need to play good cricket on the day.
"As we saw, Mumbai Indians were able to score close to 170, and that game against KKR we chased down 180-odd, so maybe we are reading too much into it, and it should be a matter of us going out there and adjusting and adapting quickly, accessing what a good total is and making necessary changes in our approach," Badree explained.
He insisted that it is not a 130-140 pitch. "I still feel it is a 160-170 pitch as long as we can apply ourselves and set up a solid foundation. I do think it is application more than anything and maybe mentally we may have been giving the pitch more credit than we should. Therefore, it is something that we have discussed and we will look to come good tomorrow."
Delhi have their task cut-out to make it to the play-offs, but Badree said they were not looking too far ahead. "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.
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