Narine may have erred under pressure, hints KKR coach
Sunil Narine is working hard on his remodelled action, but Kolkata Knight Riders coach Trevor Bayliss feels it will take him a year or two to perfect it. Bayliss also indicated that the spinner erred under pressure.
“He (Narine) has done a lot of hard work after the Champions League T20. If you’ve seen the first two or three games this season, his action was very, very good. Over a period of time, under a little bit of pressure, the body reverts to the action you usually bowl. It will take a year or two to be absolutely perfect under pressure. It will depend on how hard he works on it, but he has worked very hard on that since October and turned up in the IPL with a new action. We are quite confident he wants to work hard, he wants to play cricket and wants to do the right thing,” Bayliss said on the eve of tomorrow’s game against the Delhi Daredevils.
But is there an update on the ‘mystery’ spinner, who went through a further re-test at the ICC accredited centre in Chennai? “We are still waiting to hear the results of the tests. He’s continuing to work on his new action as he has done for last three-four months. When we find out, we will make some decisions,” said Bayliss.
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The coach, however, is very impressed with the way 44-year-old Brad Hogg has stood up to be counted. “Brad Hogg has done a fantastic job in Sunil’s absence. We picked him as a replacement for Sunil because we were not exactly sure what was going to happen… We wanted a spinner who was difficult to pick for a lot of batters, and certainly Hogg was in that category. Especially in the Big Bash, batters found him difficult to pick. He performed a similar role for Perth Scorchers when he had come here for the CLT20 in September (last year), and not many Indian or international batters managed to pick his wrong’uns. With the batters unsure about what’s coming down the wicket makes the job a little more difficult, and hopefully, it brings more wickets for us.”
Bayliss defended optimising the home advantage. “All teams try to play to their strengths and the conditions that the home ground offers. We did that as well. We’ve got a good all-round bowling attack. We’ve got some very good seam bowlers. But in the second half of the season, when the wicket gets hot, it does take some turn. We’ve got some good spin bowlers to do the job. Our bowlers for the last three-four seasons have done a fantastic job.”
Both Umesh Yadav and Andre Russell suffer from lack of consistency when they represent their respective national teams. Here, they’re bowling with greater pace and control. Is it down to Wasim Akram’s presence as bowling coach? “The level is higher in international cricket. Also, the IPL environment is a factor. The noise and hype; when players perform in front of those crowds, they want to do well.”
Source:: Indian Express