"I know he had a hard time" - RCB coach Andy Flower backs Yash Dayal to produce the goods in IPL 2024
Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) coach Andy Flower has thrown his weight behind pacer Yash Dayal to come good during the IPL 2024 season. After an impressive debut IPL season in 2022 where Dayal picked 11 wickets, he was at the wrong end of a Rinku Singh masterclass earlier this year.
The southpaw smashed Dayal for five sixes off five balls to win the game for his team and that seemed to shatter the left-arm pacer's confidence. With just two wickets and an economy rate of 11.79, Dayal was released by the Gujarat Titans.
This naturally raised quite a few eyebrows when RCB went hard for him in the IPL 2024 auction, shelling out a whopping INR 5 crore. However, speaking to Jio Cinema, Andy Flower explained why he believed in Yash Dayal's potential. He said:
"As far as Yash Dayal is concerned, we saw some of his potential last year, certainly with the new ball for swing and wicket-taking potential. I know he had a hard time at the death occasionally, but we believe he has got high potential and we are looking for great things from him."
Andy Flower also spoke about the acquisition of West Indies speedster Alzarri Joseph. He added:
"We had a go at Pat Cummins but were outbid in the end. We went for Alzarri and are really happy to have him. He is a quality operator. Faf (du Plessis) and I have worked with him before at Saint Lucia Kings and I think Faf's worked with him in the SA20 as well."
Andy Flower backs RCB's gun batting line-up to set IPL 2024 ablaze
Andy Flower was delighted to have traded in all-rounder Cameron Green ahead of the auction. The RCB coach felt that Green completed a formidable top six for them that would help them score big as well as chase down mammoth totals when needed.
On this, he stated:
"With the recruitment of Cameron Green, we certainly wanted to get some power into the middle order. So, if we have got (Glenn) Maxwell and Green at four and five, it gives us that power.
"We have got DK (Dinesh Karthik) at number six and obviously the class of Faf (Du Plessis), Virat (Kohli) and (Rajat) Patidar upfront. We think that is a really great top six. We should be able to set big totals and chase down big totals."
With a new management team and quite a few fresh faces, it will be interesting to see whether RCB can finally end their IPL trophy drought.