Our fault was that we didn’t readjust: James Hopes

Delhi Capitals’ bowling coach James Hopes said his team “didn’t readjust” after losing three wickets in the first four overs against Kolkata Knight Riders on April 29 (Monday). The Capitals lost Prithvi Shaw, Jake Fraser-McGurk and Shai Hope early in the innings, but were still going at more than 11 runs per over.

Rishabh Pant and Abishek Porel wanted to carry the momentum forward and take their team past 210-220. However, Delhi kept losing wickets and were eventually reduced to 111/8. Kuldeep Yadav did get 35* off 26 but DC could only manage a below-par total of 153, which KKR chased down in just 16.3 overs.

“Tonight was a missed opportunity for us and we won’t be hiding behind any excuses for that.  think the thought process behind it was, having some success in putting up a big score on the board and then try and defend it. I think we knew there wasn’t going to be much dew and there wasn’t. There was barely any dew at the end,” said Hopes.

“We knew batting first that we needed a score with a 2 in front of it. And maybe after our powerplay, which we still thought 200 was definitely possible after being 3/68 (67) at the end of the powerplay. We might have aimed a bit too high and didn’t understand quickly enough. Yes, it was sticking for the spinners and we have two pretty good spinners ourselves. Maybe targeting the 180-210 score was more realistic and more defendable. We lost a few wickets going a bit too hard.

“I am not in the batter’s meeting but the plan going into this game was that this has been a high-scoring venue. Even though we lost three wickets in the powerplay, we had no reason to think we would not get anything other than that. We were scoring at 11.5 an over. We were still thinking 200-220. Our fault was that we didn’t readjust or recalibrate our sight on something slightly lower.

“I think everyone assumed the last 48 hours coming into this game that it is going to another 200-240 game. I don’t think the trick is understanding that it’s not that sometimes and you have to actually put a defendable score on board and not go too hard and get some of that 150. In the end, we did pretty well to get to 150 with Kuldeep Yadav batting the way he did.”

In response, Phil Salt whacked 68 off 33 deliveries and killed the game in the first six overs. Lizaad Williams dropped him in the second over, and Salt didn’t look back. 

“I just saw Phil Salt whack the ball everywhere. We dropped him at deep mid-wicket in Vizag and we dropped him in the second over. When you give players a second opportunity to score runs they are going to take it. Our fielding today wasn’t up to scratch. We had dropped important catches in the tournament, that’s no one’s fault and that can just happen,” said Hopes.

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