During his playing days, Rahul Dravid was India’s crisis man on innumerable occasions. On Tuesday, at the Barsapara Stadium in Guwahati, it seemed Dravid was back doing Dravid things, but with a twist.
Dravid, who at present is wheelchair-bound because of a leg injury he sustained while playing in a local league match in Bengaluru, is the head coach of Rajasthan Royals, the Kolkata Knight Riders’ opponents in Wednesday’s IPL clash. But more than the Royals’ men, it was the Knights who gathered around Dravid, seemingly for some much-needed advice.
Among those who were all ears to what Dravid had to say were the Knights quartet of Manish Pandey, Venkatesh Iyer, Angkrish Raghuvanshi and Rinku Singh. Three of them, minus Pandey who was not in the playing XI, had forgettable outings in their opening loss against the Royal Challengers Bengaluru.
What did Dravid tell them? We don’t know. But given Dravid’s expertise in guiding young cricketers, the Knights would hope that the three came back with some invaluable advice which could help them in Wednesday’s game, which might again be atough test.
The other evening at the Eden, captain Ajinkya Rahane played a blinder to help the Knights score at over 10 an over, recovering from the early dismissal of opener Quinton de Kock. Sunil Narine, the other opener, was not at his fluent best as well. Once Rahane departed, Venkatesh Rinku, Andre Russell and young Raghuvanshi perished without much of a contribution. Then, on a relatively easy Eden pitch, the Knights’ best bowlers — tweakers Narine and Varun Chakravarthy — then had an ordinary outing. The inexperienced pace attack did not do any better.
In Guwahati on Wednesday, the 22-yard strip is expected to be a high-scoring one. Another test for the KKR bowlers? But then, the Royals bowlers too will be under massive pressure after the carnage they faced at the hands of Travis Head and Ishan Kishan in their opener against Sunrisers Hyderabad.
It remains to be seen if the Royals continue with England quick Jofra Archer, who suffered the ignominy of being clobbered for 76 off his four wicketless overs — the most expensive spell in IPL history — by the Sunrisers batters.
But batting-wise, the Riyan Parag-led side will not be short on confidence as the likes of Sanju Samson, Dhruv Jurel and Shimron Hetmyer will look to feast on anything loose on a belter of a surface.
Besides, Yashasvi Jaiswal, dismissed early againstthe Sunrisers, will be hungry for runs too. And if he gets going, it’s bad news for the rival bowlers. The Knights, however, don’t want to read too much into their loss in the opening game.
“As a team, we are not too worried about the first game,” bowling coach Bharat Arun said on Tuesday. “It’s always good to win the first match... You gain momentum. But there were a lot of positives from the first game, so some lessons to be learnt from there.
“In game No. 1, it can happen. We could have capitalised, we could have got more runs had we not lost wickets towards the end of our innings. But whatever you do, there is always an opportunity to bowl better.
“However, this team is not too worried. We’ll learn from what happened in the last game and try to get better.”
Whether the Knights bring in South African Anrich Nortje, who’s more experienced than Australian left-arm quick Spencer Johnson, is to be seen. Also, it may not be a bad idea to promote Rinku up the order at No. 4 or 5, as he then gets more balls to face than what he gets going in at No. 6.
To be fair to Raghuvanshi, the 20-year-old had tried his best to deliver on Saturday, scoring 30 runs at a strike rate of over 140. Skipper Rahane too had highlighted the need to back the players instead of “pinpointing” faults.
Most of KKR’s problems will vanish if Russell bats like he does in T20s. The Knights do trust him to come goodon Wednesday.
“Of course, for champions like Russell, I think it must be weighing on his mind that he failed in the last game. But he’s out to prove every single game. We are also hoping that he will really come good in tomorrow (Wednesday)’s game,” Arun said.