‘I’m not concerned’: Chennai Super Kings coach Fleming on Ravindra Jadeja’s poor form

PTI

Pune, May 5

Chennai Super Kings coach Stephen Fleming is not too concerned about the form of Ravindra Jadeja but said going forward, the team will evaluate which position in the batting order best suits the star all-rounder.

In the 10 matches this season, Jadeja has scored just 116 runs at an average of 19.33 in 10 games, while taking five wickets at an economy rate of 7.52.

On Wednesday, Jadeja was dismissed for three as CSK went down by 13 runs against Royal Challengers Bangalore, their seventh loss overall.

“No, I am not concerned. The T20 game can be tough and when you are batting at No 5 or 6, you do not get a lot of time to get your rhythm or tempo,” Fleming said during a virtual press conference.

“We will look at it now and work out what the best order would be going forward. But, no I am not concerned about his form.”

Terribly out of form, Jadeja had last week handed back captaincy to Mahendra Singh Dhoni to focus on his own game.

With just six points from 10 games, CSK are virtually out of the tournament and Fleming admitted they “have been off in all departments.”

“Our fielding at times, the catches we dropped is of concern. We are not far away, in lot of games you can say we were really close in winning them.

“We had the games taken away or we were not good enough to get across the line. But that’s usually the story of the competition if you are just off. All three departments have been below par,” he said.

“We lost some bowlers also, you have to acknowledge that but yeah, we have been just off.” Injuries to key players have also affected CSK with Deepak Chahar being the most prominent member to miss the entire season due to a back injury which he sustained while recovering from the quadricep tear.

Moeen Ali also missed a few games after injuring his ankle during a training session.

“We had a couple of players we had in our plans whom we lost early on, so we looked at bringing young players in, probably, little bit ahead of their times. Mukesh Choudhury has developed well, Simranjit is getting an opportunity here,” Fleming said.

“But we just have been off our balance and competition as tight as this, that can be the difference. We have some very good spin options.”

Most important victory of the tournament: Hazlewood

RCB pacer Josh Hazlewood described their 13-run win over CSK as the most important victory for the team so far in the tournament as it kept them in the hunt for the play-offs.

The win snapped RCB’s three-match losing streak and helped them to move to the fourth position in points table.

“It is probably the most important victory of the tournament so far. We are sort of at that point where we have to win all games to make the play-off, that’s what I feel, and today was the first step in doing that,” he said.

“We have been flat last three games, we have things to work on bowling, batting and on fielding to be honest. We put it all together and held our chances, so its most important victory so far.” On his T20 form, Hazlewood said: “It is mostly playing continuous T20 cricket for last three years and learning things along the way on differently conditions, against different players.

“Talking to lot of voices in this camp, there is lot of experience which is handy, it accelerates the learning process for me who has played just 60-70 T20 games.”