Eric Simons focues on young Indian Cricketers

With Morkel likely to miss the opener, Simmons believes the young cricketers provides options

Delhi Daredevils have been hit with injuries in this season opener as they miss Virender Sehwag and Pietersen. They also will the miss the service of Morne Morkel as he’s doing domestic duty at home. Delhi Daredevils Coach howr focus on the efforts to promote young Indian Cricketers.

Delhi has been pushed into this kind of circumstance due to several injuries to key players. “It’s actually something we spoke about yesterday when we were discussing the fact that there were injuries,” Simons, the Daredevils coach, said. “We spoke about the fact that it presents massive opportunities and I think perhaps one of the things that we haven’t done in the past is allow some of the youngsters to come through like some of the other teams have done. That is certainly one of our focuses this time – to have that young domestic cricketer really blossom this season. We have got some really young and talented domestic cricketers. Hopefully, this IPL presents them with a great opportunity to show their abilities on a really big stage. We are excited about what they bring to our team as well and the situation provides a great opportunity.”

He also said that Morkel’s presence would b known by today. “His team has qualified for the semifinal on April 3. Depending on the result of that, we will know when he will be available,” Simons said. “It’s a huge loss when you lose a player like that. When you have a player like that, then a lot of game plans are built around him. But we do believe we have done really well between the two IPLs to bring more balance to our squad. This year, we can be a lot more innovative in our selections, it gives us more options and that was certainly an important lesson that we learnt.”

“Injuries would be a huge part of the IPL but the team that handled its resources best would be the one that would be standing at the end” Simons said. “As a management group, we were talking about what is going to characterise this IPL, and I think that is going to be the injuries. It’s about getting squads through the tournament in the best possible shape. It’s not just us, (Brendon) McCullum is not here. There’s a few teams there that have got chaps struggling.

“But one of the positives is that both Irfan Pathan and Umesh Yadav have bowled really well in the nets in the last day or two. The fact that they are coming back from injuries means they are fresh and hopefully that is going to count in our favour. Obviously, it was a great disappointment to lose KP Kevin Pietersen

“Everyone knows what role he played for us last year as a batsman and off the field as well. And obviously, the very sad news about Jesse. We were very excited to have him in our set-up, but fortunately he has got through that nasty little episode quite well. I think that’s what the IPL is about, it’s managing those crisis moments and the fact is that we have traded well, we have bought well. We have got a lot of variations in our bowling. He can pick different teams in different conditions and cover areas when we do have injuries.”

Delhi’s team mentor TA Sekar feels that opener against Knight Riders will be an even contest as both sides have been hit with injuries. “In T20, every team is good because you need only a couple of bad balls or good balls to win matches,” he said. “They are champions, so definitely their confidence level will be very high. But they are also missing a lot of players due to injuries. I think it is an even-playing field now, we have also lost KP and Jesse. One thing we did was, keeping in mind the injuries, was that we replaced some players and some of the players we bought in the trade and the auction have been very good, like (Ashish) Nehra coming in. An Indian fast bowler, an experienced fast bowler – that is very good. We are quite confident that we will be able to do well.”