Conditions have not been traditional this season: Stephen Fleming

The tenth season of the Indian Premier League is half-way through. A team registering par scores and successfully defending them has become a familiar theme in this tournament. Usually, IPL is always a high scoring tournament with the odd low-scoring games but this year it has been a complete turnaround.

Rising Pune Supergiant have struck form at the right time. They have won the last three games successively and are now nicely placed at the 4th position in the points table. Playing at the Wankhede and Chinnaswamy, RPS successfully defended par scores of 160 and 161 against Mumbai and RCB respectively. The conditions in some grounds in this edition of IPL have been different which has led to a better balance between bat and ball feels RPS coach Stephen Fleming.

The conditions in some grounds in this edition of IPL have been different they haven’t been complete flat tracks favouring the batsmen which has led to a better balance between bat and ball feels RPS coach Stephen Fleming.

“Conditions have not been traditional this season,” Fleming wrote in his column for Times of India. “Bangalore, for example, is a low-scoring ground. Mumbai was very dry, with not a lot of dew, while Kolkata produced a seaming wicket, with quite a bit of pace and bounce.

“Therefore, the key this year is to read the conditions and play accordingly. So even though people may have expected us to score more than we did against Mumbai, 160 on that pitch was a challenging total. The expectations of fans may be based on past years but this edition of the IPL has seen the world’s best players struggle to score at the death.” The RPS coach stated.

“That means one of two things – either the bowling has been extremely good or the conditions aren’t easy to score in, particularly when the ball gets old. I feel the balanced competition is a good thing, instead of 190-200 every time. The best T20 games are often the low-scoring ones,” he added.

True to Fleming’s analysis, the bowling has also been exceptionally good this season especially at the death. Bowlers like Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Basil Thampi, Chris Morris, Ben Stokes and the likes have produced immaculate yorkers at the death which has made scoring difficult.

After RPS’s successful defence of 160 against Mumbai at Wankhede, KKR won a game against RCB by 82 runs defending a modest 131 at the Eden Gardens. RCB recorded the lowest score in the IPL when they got bowled out for 49 within 10 overs.

To be fair to the batsmen, the bowling was of exceptionally high quality but the shot-making helped the bowling look extraordinary, something to which KKR coach Jacques Kallis agreed as well.

“There was absolutely nothing ‘wrong’ with the pitch for that match,” Kallis wrote in his Times of India column. “There was a little bit more pace and bounce than the average Indian pitch – and certainly more than there used to be at the Gardens – but nothing that a decent technique couldn’t handle.

“In truth, it was a poor batting display from both teams,” the South African stated.

RPS will now host KKR, who are second on the points table, on Wednesday at the MCA Stadium. Both the team are fresh from a win in their last game and would want to take the momentum into the business end of the tournament.