Pune Warriors India (PWI)’s coach, Geoff Marsh, cited lack of consistent batting and injuries of key players as prime reasons behind his team’s terrible performance in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL).
With all play-off dreams dashed, the Warriors, who started their debut IPL campaign in a stylish way and subsequently went into a slump, are languishing at second last spot in the IPL standings.
Deploring his team’s not-so-impressive show in the tournament, Marsh said, "The inconsistency with our batting has been disappointing. We just have not batted well enough. I think about five times we have been four down for 40 runs. It's very hard to win a game from there no matter how well the bowlers bowl”.
Referring to the injured players, Angelo Mathews, Ashish Nehra, Tim Paine, and, Graeme Smith, the former Australian cricketer added, "We have very good players. We have been a bit unlucky with injuries. We lost some key players whereas other teams have kept their guys going".
However, Marsh made it clear that the injuries are no excuse of such a poor performance, as there are still some quality players in the set-up, who failed to perform to their potential.
The Warriors are scheduled to play against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), on May 19, 2011. Although, the team has wasted all of its opportunities to make it into the play-offs, the coach said that the team can still pull the rug out from the rivals' feet and redeem respect and pride by winning their remaining two games.
"We can't make the finals, which is disappointing. All we can do is stop other teams from getting there. We want to finish in the best possible way we can, with two wins", Marsh stated on the eve of Pune's penultimate round-robin contest against KKR.
The coach put it in simple words that the team needs to overcome batting department woes in order to give a tough time to the opposition.
Meanwhile, he also asked Jesse Ryder and Yuvraj Singh to take responsibility and score 60-plus runs in the next two matches.
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