Sunrisers Hyderabad head coach Tom Moody is not concerned about the speed sensation Umran Malik’s sudden skinny patch and said his side were doing their best to ensure the youngster learns from experience. While taking 15 wickets from eight games, Malik returned wicketless in the last three games, with the batters opting for a counterattack. In the game against RCB here on Sunday, Malik leaked 20 runs in his first left as Faf du Plessis and Rajat Patidar attacked him.
“It’s a real learning experience for him. If you look at the amount of cricket he’s had, it’s actually very, very minimal,” Moody said after SRH lost by 67 runs.
“So this run of games for him is something he’s not used to. He’s not used to playing this regular cricket, the high intensity cricket that IPL brings.
“He’s on a very steep learning curve. Over the past few outings, there’s no question that he hasn’t done well. We’re doing our best to support and guide him to learn from these experiences,” Moody said.
Faf du Plessis and Rajat Patidar gave RCB a strong start after losing Virat Kohli from the very first ball of the match and then Dinesh Karthik took full advantage of his drop catcher to play an excellent cameo from 30 not out of eight balls to back the total at 192/3.
“It’s the small margins that we haven’t taken advantage of. We shouldn’t have chased the total we were chasing in the end.
“We dropped two important catches, which cost us costs. If you miss those small margins, it makes it very difficult for your batting group to go out and make a total of 20-25 runs more than it should have to be.
“Then we got a run-out in the very first over and it put us on the back foot. It made that chase even more daunting,” he said.
Natarajan, Sundar ready for comeback
Left arm seamer T Natarajan, who is the Sunrisers leading wicket-taker, was again sorely missed as their spinner Washington Sundar was also ruled out.
With their next match scheduled after five days, Moody hoped the duo will be available for selection against Kolkata Knight Riders (on May 14).
promoted
“Washy, we hope, should be available for selection at our next match. Nattu, we also hope he will be available for that match as well.
“We have a few days in between and they will both train. Hopefully they will have confidence and we will be sure to select them,” Moody said.
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