NEW DELHI: An exasperated Chennai Super Kings coach Stephen Fleming said their failure to read the pitch at Chepauk has denied them any home advantage in the new season of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
Five-time champion Chennai suffered their biggest defeat at home, in terms of runs, on Friday when Royal Challengers Bengaluru thumped them by 50 runs.
It was Bengaluru’s first victory against Chennai at Chepauk since the league’s inaugural edition in 2008.
“Well, as we’ve been telling you for a number of years, there was no home advantage at Chepauk,” Fleming said after Chennai’s first defeat of the new season.
“We haven’t been able to read the wickets here in the last couple of years,” he added. “So it’s not new. We are trying to come to grips each day with what we get, and we don’t know.”
Chennai’s spinners were not really effective, while Josh Hazlewood led Bengaluru’s superb pace display to set up their victory.
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“It’s not the Chepauk (of old) where you can just go in and play four spinners,” former New Zealand captain Fleming said. “We’re having to work really hard to try and understand what the nature of each pitch is, and it’s quite different.”
Even the dew that Fleming had expected set in during the second innings did not materialise and Chennai fell well short of their target of 197.
“No, we didn’t get it right,” Fleming said. “It’s so hard to read, but we thought it was going to skid on with the dew, but it actually got a bit tacky. So, it certainly made it (batting) harder here.”
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