The Delhi Capitals’ assistant coach, Pravin Amre, commended rookie Jake Fraser-McGurk for making an immediate impression as the team defeated the Lucknow Super Giants handily to move up from the bottom spot they had held for some time. The squad had lost two straight games before this triumph. The Capitals, chasing 168 for victory, needed just 18.1 overs to cross the finish line, mostly because of a 77-run partnership between Fraser-McGurk (55 off 35) and captain Rishabh Pant (41 off 24).
“Jake had a fantastic inning,” Amre remarked at Friday’s (April 13) post-game press conference. He was hitting brilliantly in the nets, and it was evident that he possessed the x-factor—the capacity to hit sixes. As you can see, he scored two runs in the first two innings and finished with five sixes. In this structure, that’s what we want. The past two games we were playing well, but we weren’t going overboard. We wanted someone to make an impression on the game for this reason, and I believe he did.
Jake is a hitter in the top order. Warner is with us, and Shai Hope, who batted third in the first game for us, did a good job before getting hurt. We were aware that he would eventually get his chance, which he seized today. There is a big difference between performing well in the nets and in a match, thus it is crucial for any talented player to demonstrate it in the middle. And he demonstrated exactly the kind of batting needed for this format, which makes me very delighted.”
Amre also gave Kuldeep Yadav credit for his performance, which made it possible for DC to contain LSG after they had made a strong start by scoring 58 in the powerplay. The assistant coach was especially pleased with Nicholas Pooran’s dismissal, citing it as a pivotal moment in the match that caused LSG to trail by 30 runs despite a valiant half-century from Ayush Badoni.
“Kuldeep bowled brilliantly today, hitting Nicholas Pooran with a dream ball. Pooran is a match-winning batsman, so getting him out was essential to keeping them to 160 (167).” Yes, Badoni struck a fifty off of 31 balls, but we had control of the game and Kuldeep helped us cut the advantage from 160 to 190. We were able to have a nice spell in the middle overs, and I also believe that Axar [Patel] played a significant part. Following a strong powerplay by them, we took control of the game. Our spin department deserves credit,” Amre remarked.
At one point, Kuldeep’s 3-20 spell and the seamers’ significant strikes brought LSG down to 94/7. But Badoni’s unbeaten 55 off 35 and his 73-run partnership with Arshad Khan helped them reach 167.
“I had a rough start to the season. But because I was hitting well in the nets, I had a lot of motivation. All I was doing was encouraging myself to play a significant inning, which I did tonight. Badoni expressed his gratitude to Justin Langer and KL Rahul for supporting him and providing him an opportunity. “I thought I would bat it out to the end and then launch an attack. We could score more than 150 runs if we played 20 overs. We eventually scored more than 160 runs, but we fell short by 20 runs.”
