CPL coaches urge batsmen to invest time at crease

COACHES in the Hero Caribbean Premier League T20 tournament admitted that the wickets have been tough for batting, but urged their batsmen to give themselves time to settle at the crease which will make scoring easier.

Twenty of the 33 matches have been completed in the tournament and there have been only five scores of 160 or more.

Trinbago Knight Riders (TKR) have the highest score of 185/3 batting first against Barbados Tridents. The spinners have been using the slow wickets to their advantage, especially at the Queen’s Park Oval in St Clair, as three of the top five wicket-takers in the tournament are spinners.

Jamaica Tallawahs off-spinner Mujeeb Ur Rahman is the leading wicket-taker with 13 wickets, Guyana Amazon Warriors leg spinner Imran Tahir is third with 11 wickets and St Lucia Zouks off-spinner Mohammad Nabi is fourth with ten wickets.

In separate interviews on Monday, the coaches gave their view on the wickets during the tournament.

TKR coach Brendon McCullum said, “It is difficult. From the coach’s box, it looks obviously a bit easier than what it is and speaking to a few guys the pitches are certainly challenging.”

McCullum added, “It is not ideal that the tournament because of covid has to be played in one place, but at least we are playing a tournament and we’ve got to find a way to overcome the challenge that those pitches can offer.”

The TKR coach, who said the groundsmen have had their challenges with the weather, said the batsmen may have to change their approach. “The key is from a batting point of view is to try and bring an element of craft to your game as well. Invest a bit of time in the conditions and try to catch up later on in your innings.”

St Lucia Zouks coach Andy Flower said, “The pitches have been quite tricky, but from what I understand the pitches at the Queen’s Park Oval are usually quite tricky and useful to bowl spin on.

So I don’t think that has been any great surprise for anyone. I don’t think that people have batted as well as they could have to be honest.”

Elaborating on the batting strategy, Flower said, “I think if you can alternate strike off spin bowlers better balls that is a good place to start your innings. We have seen (Zouks all-rounder) Mohammad Nabi do that and that helps him get in, get used to the pace of the wicket and how much it is turning etcetera.”

Barbados Tridents coach Trevor Penney said, “The wickets have been real tough to bat on. There are only four players that I have seen (dominate). Kyle Mayers has played brilliantly on these wickets, but the other three are obviously (Kieron) Pollard, Evin Lewis and (Nicholas) Pooran yesterday (Sunday) and they are hitters of the ball. All the timers of the ball seem to the struggling so you sort of get stuck (with) lots of dots and when you go for the big one you get caught on the boundary.”

The first week of matches were played at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy before the tournament moved to the Queen’s Park Oval for the second week of matches. The remaining 13 matches of the tournament will be played at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy and Penney thinks the wicket at Brian Lara will be more conducive to batting.