No room for sympathy for Delhi Daredevils

I really believed we could win the game against Chennai Super Kings on Sunday despite chasing 200 for victory. It was a great pitch and I was confident we could score at 10 an over to get our campaign back on track, so it was a huge disappointment to get so close but not cross the line.

Mike Hussey was outstanding for CSK and provided further proof of my theory that T20 cricket is not necessarily a young man’s game. I wouldn’t be surprised to see “Mr Cricket” still performing like that when he is 40.

I had a feeling that Mani Bisla was coming in to form and he proved it with an innings every bit as good as Hussey’s; how ironic that it was Hussey who ran him out and turned the match on its head.

From a very young age, my late father instilled a work ethic in me that never allowed me to give up. I have never lost that “training” and I’m not about to start now. I’m glad to say the same applies to the rest of the KKR squad because we have a title to defend.

The result of an IPL game can be decided off a single ball and it’s not necessarily the last ball of the match. The margins are so tiny between success and failure, victory and defeat that a similar performance can earn you two points one night and nothing the next.

Two games ago, the first three overs I bowled cost just 11 runs, while on Sunday the first two overs cost 32. One day you can read what the batsman is going to do but the next it is his turn to predict correctly.

It was good to see Brendon “Baz” McCullum finally get a chance in the starting XI, and hopefully he’ll be able to make the sort of match-winning contributions we know he is capable of. He is a highly competitive person and that extends to the golf course. I am happy to say, however, that the South Africa pair of Ryan McLaren and Jacques Kallis remain unbeaten so far during IPL 6.

Nobody expected to see last season’s log leaders Delhi Daredevils struggle in the way that they have this time around. It has been a real shock watching them lose so many games with so many quality cricketers in their squad. Eric Simons is one of the best coaches I have ever worked with, which makes their predicament even harder to understand — but their plight is more evidence of what I said about the margins being so small in this format. Hopefully we can add to their misery on Wednesday. It’s a hard game and there is no room for sympathy!