Bengaluru, Oct 16 Acknowledging the challenges of bowling on flat pitches in the series against the West Indies, India’s fast bowling coach Morne Morkel urged his wards to “move on” and make “smart decisions” under pressure.
Bowlers were taken to cleaners in the ongoing T20I series as the last six innings have produced totals well in excess of 200.
“Obviously, you need to move on. It is quite a quick turnaround in between games. You do not have the luxury of training sessions where you can go and work on a lot of stuff,” Morkel said in the pre-match press conference here on Friday.
“You also want to take the learnings. So, we had a very nice sort of sit-down discussion this morning with some of the bowlers just to identify certain areas and what we can expect here.
“For me, it is just how we can get a younger sort of bowling attack to make smarter decisions under pressure,” he added.
But Morkel felt that the series has offered a lot of lessons for the young bowlers in the dressing room such as pacer Prince Yadav.
“It has been a great learning for our bowling group. Prince Yadav, who came into the squad, has done really well in executing his skills. He’s a guy that keeps it very simple.
“He understands his strengths, and he sticks to that. sSo, yeah, I think for us, it’s more sort of having those conversations in the group and learning from each other, understanding each other’s bowling.”
Morkel was particularly impressed with the development of Prince as an all-phase bowler in white-ball format.
“One thing about Prince for me is, obviously, the way he plays his state cricket, domestic cricket, you know, it’s a flat wicket, so I can understand that he’s developed a great skill in a white ball game.
“In my time with him at LSG (in the IPL), he was very quickly identified as a person who can bowl those death yorkers, and that’s obviously very crucial in this format of the game.
“But what I like about him a lot is his mindset, the calmness that he brings with the ball in tight situations. If you look at the games that we’ve used him so far, he’s come into times where it is very tough to bowl, and I think he’s done that exceptionally well,” he said.
(PTI News)
