Robin Uthappa’s coach reveals what helped him score big against Pune

Robin Uthappa, ever since joining the Kolkata Knight Riders, has been one of the most consistent IPL batsmen. He, along with Gautam Gambhir formed one of the best opening partners in the cash-rich league. But Uthappa’s scoring rate had been a concern for a long time; his inning was too slow for that of an opener.

He won the orange cap in 2014, but with a strike rate of only 137.78. For him to change the dynamics of his batting, he had to change his stance. His personal coach Pravin Amre revealed that the journey to convince Uthappa to change his batting stance was not easy.

The reason behind his current strike rate of 165.85, is his new stance which lets him attack more freely. Delhi Daredevils batting coach Pravin Amre, speaking to Cricketnext revealed that he and Uthappa worked for a month on the latter’s stance before Uthappa joined KKR at the start of the season.

“My job is to be the mirror for Uthappa and that is why sometimes I have to think out of the box. Even though Uthappa was getting runs, I somewhere felt that he needed a stance that suited him in all the three formats and where he could play aggressively against both the pacers and spinners.”

Amre, further said that convincing the Karnataka batsman to bring about this change was not easy. And that was understandable since a batsman who is performing well and scoring runs he would obviously not want to change his stance.

“It was not an easy job to convince him. And honestly, he is no exception. When as a batsman you score runs, you do not want to change your style of batting and to be fair to Uthappa, he has been scoring well. It is not like he was going through a lean patch, so we had to have a few sessions where we just sat down and I explained to him the reason behind this change of guard,” he explained.

KKR are currently at the top of the table and will next face the Delhi Daredevils at Eden Gardens