IPL 2021: "Talent only gets you so far; you need to turn it into performance" - Eoin Morgan
Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) captain Eoin Morgan expressed his disappointment after his team's loss to the Delhi Capitals (DC), their fifth in IPL 2021, on Thursday.
Eoin Morgan rued that KKR were slow with the bat and failed to get going with the ball. He felt that 154 were not enough runs on the board and also observed that defending a total like that gets much tougher when a player like Prithvi Shaw gets going.
Shaw (82 off 41) tore into the KKR bowling from the get-go, blasting six boundaries in the first over to signal his intentions. Eoin Morgan lamented his team's inadequacies on the field, saying:
"Yeah, very disappointed. We were off the pace today, quite slow off the blocks with the bat, and then lost the wickets through that middle period. Andre Russell played a hand towards the end to get us to 150, but then we were slow again with the ball, and when a player like Prithvi Shaw gets going like that, it's very difficult to stop. But also it goes to show how good the wicket was and how far off the pace we were. Yes, disappointing all-round."
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Eoin Morgan noted that KKR didn't get their act together in any of the departments of the game. He said in this regard:
"Throughout the tournament so far, we've struggled to combine batting and bowling in one match. Today, both facets of the game were off. When you give a side like Delhi chances like that, they take advantage of them."
"Hopefully, we can turn things around" - Eoin Morgan
The strategy of bowling Shivam Mavi in the first over backfired for KKR, as Prithvi Shaw smashed him for six fours. Pat Cummins, the leader of the KKR bowling attack, didn't come on to bowl till the sixth over of the innings.
Explaining the rationale behind that, Eoin Morgan elaborated:
"He (Cummins) has been bowled earlier with the new ball (last season). Mavi bowled four on the trot last game and bowled well. Moving forward, we need our big-name players to get into the action."
Despite the emphatic defeat, Eoin Morgan is hopeful of turning things around and wants to continue backing the youngsters in the team. However, he noted that talent without performance doesn't serve the team's cause, saying:
"You need to be honest and realistic. Otherwise you are doing a disservice to the guys in the change room. Hopefully, we can turn things around. We have a huge amount of talent, but talent only gets you so far. You need to turn it into performance, which we haven't done."
Meanwhile, Eoin Morgan was one of the big-name KKR players who flopped in the game. The KKR captain tried to hit a big shot off the second ball he faced but only ended up holing out to Steve Smith in the deep.