‘Lacked penetration with the ball’

DD’s bowling coach Hopes concerned by lack of wickets

DD bowling coach James Hopes was a frustrated man after the team became the first to be knocked out this season on Thursday, failing to defend 187 against Sunrisers Hyderabad.

“To be honest, we lacked penetration with the ball. I told the bowlers to not get too predictable or get stuck doing one plan. Sunrisers, the best bowling team in the competition, got caught a little bit in the end with doing just one thing all the time and Rishabh (Pant) got them on. I am really concerned, we are not taking wickets,” he admitted.

“When you see a guy getting 128 off 63 balls and the rest of our batters get 59 off 57 balls, it does concern you. If we can do it, the other team can do it as well so, yes, there was a little concern at the break. Having said that, 188 should have been a more than competitive score,” he added.

Sandeep praises Pant

That special knock got praise the opposition as well with SRH pacer Sandeep Sharma giving credit to Pant. “I will give credit to Rishabh. He got runs off even good balls. One batsman got 128 but still we did not allow them to reach 200. I don’t think we bowled badly, he just batted very well,” said Sandeep.

SRH coach Tom Moody had said wickets in PowerPlay were a concern and Sandeep admitted there were areas of improvement.

“No team or player is perfect. There are a lot of things we can improve upon like fielding, game awareness and communication. We need to figure out how to limit the damage when a guy like Rishabh is playing the way he did. We can improve our wicket-taking ability with the new ball,” he added.

And while SRH is now looking to keep the momentum, DD is planning for the next edition. Rueing the loss of Kagiso Rabada and Chris Morris to injury and Mohammed Shami to personal problems, Hopes indicated the team might go in for large-scale changes in the remaining three games.

“We now need to see the big picture. What does our roster look like for next year, those things will start to be spoken about now. These next three games are a good opportunity to possibly see some of these guys, especially Junior (Dala) and Sandeep (Lamichhane) in action,” Hopes said.