Front-foot play let me down: Mandeep Singh reflects on his failures

Opening batsman Mandeep Singh, who fizzled out after winning the IPL emerging player of the year award in 2012, has said that he is aware of his issues and is working on them so that he could iron out the flaws and get better.

Mandeep believes that his problems stem from the fact that he is uncertain to anything that is pitched on the up. The 22-year-old, speaking to Wisden India, said: “I haven’t been able to perform consistently in the past two years. There have been some issues with technique and also mental. I have been working with the coaches and Viru so hopefully I will become more consistent now.”

He added: “I think I practiced really hard on the short balls so I have begun looking to face only them. Whenever I would go out to bat I would tell myself that I could only score runs off the short delivery so I wasn’t really confident when the ball was pitched up. My movement on the front foot became very weak and that is something I have been working hard on for the past three months. That was my biggest fault. Also I think I was expecting too much from myself too early.”

Mandeep scored 432 runs in 16 matches at an average of 27 and a strike-rate of 126.31 in IPL 2012. The right-hander hasn’t been able to replicate the performances in the next two editions, failing repeatedly, and now now finds himself out of the playing 11. His fall coincides with the rise of Manan Vohra, who is going great guns after being surprisingly retained –despite having not made a mark in any form of cricket till then – by Kings XI ahead of the 2014 season.

When asked if Vohra, whom he refers to as his “brother”, has any such technical issues, Mandeep said: “No, Manan doesn’t have any flaws.”