Kedar Jadhav’s place on the Chennai Super Kings side has come under scan once again after the batsman battled for a 7 of 12 balls in the later stages of his failed chase against Kolkat Knight Riders in the 2020 IPL match on Wednesday.
Jadhav came in ahead of Ravindra Jadeja and Dwayne Bravo with CSK needing 39 of 21 and took six balls to get off the mark. CSK coach Stephen Fleming explained the decision to send him ahead of the off-roaders, saying they thought Jadhav could dominate spinners Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy.
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“Kedar is a mid-late hitter for India,” Fleming said at the post-game press conference.
“He faced some balls, but it didn’t work out. We looked at all these things and thought if we could have done better, but it’s all in hindsight. Kedar could play well and dominate the area. Jadeja could finish, but we fell short.”
Fleming said he ideally would have liked one of the hitters on the set to finish the game.
“Ideally, you want a hitter to pass,” he said. “If you give an IPL team a chance, they have quality players to take it. Today with Narine retaining, he made it very difficult in the end.
“You’re looking at the players going and hitting 75 or more and continuing that partnership for five more overs, the game would have been a lot more different. KKR held on and pushed us. We couldn’t accelerate at the end. We’re disappointed we let it slip away.”
Fleming said the balance on the team is right and they don’t need an extra hitter in the XI as they are struggling to use Dwayne Bravo as a hitter.
“We have a lot of hitters, so the balance is good with six bowlers. Bravo is hitting in eighth place and we are struggling to use him, so we don’t think an additional hitter is going to help,” he said. “Sam Curran was also very good. Our challenge is that our two SUVs are doing very well, Watson and Faf are doing well, so it is very difficult to fit an international bowler in that group. We trust our bowlers. Indians We have a pretty good balance.
“Karn has been waiting for the opportunity for a while. And he arrived today, he had a bit of bad luck, but in the next three he worked really hard and got us back in the game. If you can have some confidence in this, how the fields turn drier, we can use it in combination with Piyush and Jaddu. We could operate with more spinners than we are used to. “
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