IPL 2019 | Stephen Fleming praises Hardik Pandya’s heroics in death overs

Coming out to bat at a stage when the Indians were 112/4 in the 17th over, Hardik took the attack to the CSK camp by hitting their bowlers, including death-overs specialist Dwayne Bravo, all around the park. Pandya scored 25 off just eight deliveries and, along with Kieron Pollard, took the Mumbai team to 170 at the end of the first innings. It was the explosive batting during the last passage that helped the home team to carry the momentum with them in the innings break. Pandya also picked up three wickets conceding just 20 runs in four overs that handed Chennai their first loss of the season as the MS Dhoni-led side were restricted for a mere 133 runs.

“I am a massive fan (of Pandya), I think he is a wonderful player. His confidence is up, looks like he has a good thing going with what he is doing at the death. Plans should be now for teams to combat that. We were happy with what we were trying to do but executed it poorly,” CSK coach Stephen Fleming said at the post-match press conference, reported Indian Express.

“He is a quality player. I think he is one of Mumbai’s key weapons and one of India’s key players going forward. If you keep him out of the game you often go on to win. But today with both bat and ball he was excellent.”

The Chennai team had a good start to the match with some economical bowling from the beginning. They picked up wickets at regular intervals and before the innings of Hardik and Pollard, the Indians were not even looking to cross the 150-run mark at one stage. However, things turned around in the last few overs with Bravo ending up with figures of 1/49 in his four overs.

“Over the last 5-6 overs we came a little bit unstuck. We had an extra seamer. In the last three or four overs, the game got away from us. We had been keeping things simple but today it got a bit complicated. It was a tough ask,” the former Kiwi batsman explained.

“In bowling, we were tight for the first 2/3rds but not in the last 1/3rd. A score of 150 would have been par for the course.”

With most of the IPL games going on till late hours, the Chennai coach stressed upon the importance of the things to be sped up. He also spoke about CSK’s fielding, which has been below par in this season so far with most of their players being over the age of 30. 

“I think it is going to call for a collective effort to speed up things. Moisture (because of dew) plays its part. Wiping the ball is a consideration. Cricket in general is played at a pace below what it needs to be. Cricket needs to be speeded up in all forms of the game. If it puts pressure on captains and bowlers, so be it. We need to ask captains and bowlers to be a little bit surer in their plans,” Fleming stated.

“That was one of the downsides with athletes who are a little bit older. Today we were a bit passive with movement around the field. We need to be at our absolute best. For the majority of the innings we were pretty good, but we are not going to be one of the top fielding sides in the competition.”