SRH's batting failure exposes long-standing bowling concerns

One question, for different reasons, lit up the faces of both the captains - Ajinkya Rahane and Pat Cummins - at the toss.

'What's your assessment of the pitch?'

Cummins smiled, hesitated a bit and said, "Looks like a good surface," before taking shelter with the defense of "but I'm terrible at reading it."

Rahane repeated the smile-and-hestitate pattern but couldn't stop himself from admitting. "Looks good, I'm really happy with the pitch... It will suit our spinners. At home, you should get what you want."

The bitter standoff between the pitch curator of Eden Gardens and Kolkata Knight Riders had come to an end, and the home team was offered a pitch which wasn't watered for the last five days. The dry surface was meant to aid their strength, the spin attack.

However, on Thursday evening, even before KKR's spinners could come into operation, the fate of the contest had already tilted in KKR's favour massively. On a slowish surface, after piling on 200, their pacers - Harshit Rana and Vaibhav Arora - had reduced Sunrisers Hyderabad to 9 for 3 within three overs.

It was SRH's worst start ever since they have taken to their boom-or-bust approach. Despite some fightback by the middle order, they couldn't quite come to a point where they seriously threatened KKR's total. At best, at the end of the 14th over, with 94 runs needed and Heinrich Klaasen getting a move on, there was hope of a miracle.

That too fizzled out soon and they were eventually bundled out for 120. A team that quite confidently gestured that they would hunt down the total of 300 this season, and closed in on it in the first game itself, has bust more often than boomed in the last three games.

Three massive defeats have firmly relegated SRH to the bottom of the table. While it has come at the back of underpar performances with both bat and ball, bowling coach James Franklin has claimed that there is still not enough reason to alter from the batting plans as yet.

"You don't want to take away from the natural intent of our top order and the way that they bat, because as we've witnessed quite a lot over the last year, it's breathtaking when it's going well and just the last couple of games it hasn't quite worked. They see the ball, they hit the ball, they know their own game plans and the way that they want to bat and it's probably a combination of things not quite working for them at the moment

"I think everyone was very much of the opinion that we're just taking off from where we left last year in the style that we batted. Whilst it probably hasn't worked in the last two games - because even in the second game we got close to 200 - that can just sometimes be the nature of the game that we play and the way that particularly our batters want to play the game. We want them to play the game.

"So yes, whilst it hasn't been our best stuff these last two games, we've got every confidence within our group and within the individuals within our group to go out and play that attacking brand that I think we know and we've shown from an SRH point of view over this last year or so."

The recent failure of the batters though has exposed a much-longer existing concern in their other department - bowling.

Their rare top-order failure on Thursday aside, the situation they found themselves so early in the run chase also had to do with how they operated in the death overs, conceding 78 runs in the last five overs. It didn't just shift the momentum, but pushed KKR to a total which had gone beyond SRH's means even if they were to stage a fightback from that point in the run-chase.

On a surface where the ball was stopping a bit and gripping, where shot-making was difficult, as admitted by Venkatesh Iyer, the SRH pacers failed to take advantage of the conditions. They bowled too full too often, and became predictable with their variations. Venkatesh took full toll of their mercies and had the luxury to throw his bat around at a stage when KKR still had Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh and Moeen Ali to follow.

It was a combination of failed assessment as well as execution by the SRH bowlers, according to SRH's bowling coach James Franklin. "I mean, 65 [66] off that last four overs probably reflects that we didn't get it quite right," Franklin admitted. "At the halfway stage I think KKR were 84 for two. If we'd got the back ten overs right we probably could have held them to 170, 180.

"We didn't get it quite right, the execution wasn't quite there and you know, sometimes as a coach you sit there and think okay, well could we have done things a little bit better, could we have technically been a little bit braver with some aspects of it and those are conversations that we'll obviously have in the coming days before we go again on Sunday.

"It's reflections I guess between myself and the individuals that were out there and we'll obviously look to come back better with particularly that death execution. But I think up until that point, that first three quarters of our bowling innings was pretty good stuff. Again, you could look at a lot of things and wish you could have time again. That's the nature of the game."

It isn't a new concern though for SRH, or a rare blip amidst their otherwise fine performances. For a while now, the cracks in SRH's bowling were being papered over with the success of its explosive batters. Last season they had the second worst economy rate (after Delhi Capitals) and the worst average among all bowling groups in the competition. This season, with 19 wickets from four matches, they currently have the worst economy rate (10.83) and their average of 41.15 is only exceeded by the Rajasthan Royals (46.69).

In some ways, it could be attributed to the nature of their surface at home. Similarly, the nature of their batting also pushes the opposing teams to adopt a similar approach in reciprocation out of force. And on surfaces where bowlers get limited assistance, SRH's bowlers too are bound to suffer the treatment that their batters offer to the opposition bowlers.

But if they do wish to continue with the ultra-aggressive approach with the bat despite their recent failures that Franklin stated, then the bowlers will continue to be at the receiving end of the opponent's onslaught. And they will soon need to figure out a way to be able to lift their games, if not win them on their own, on days like Thursday when the batting could suffer a collapse in their high-risk, high-reward methods.

Despite the recent dejections, Franklin is hopeful that the team will be able to turn it around in the coming days. "There's obviously some frustration within the group, but we're still [in] very early days in this IPL, and we've got a lot of quality players within our group that can certainly turn it around. So yeah, just a frustrating day," he summed up.