Cricket experts debate about the timing of Conway’s retire out in the aftermath of Chennai’s defeat to Punjab Kings.
Cricket experts Wasim Jaffer and Piyush Chawla had contrasting opinions on CSK opener Devon Conway’s withdrawal.
The Kiwi became the second player to be retired out in the space of a week. Mumbai Indians batter Tilak Verma was earlier withdrawn in their game against LSG.
Conway had scored 69 of 49 balls, but he was not able to get the scoring rate up despite his beat efforts. So in a view to limit the damage before it was too late, he was withdrawn, with Jadeja walking into the middle.
What did the experts think?
Both cricket experts had a different view on the event that took place.
Piyush Chawla was frank in his assessment that Chennai erred by withdrawing Conway too late in the innings. He believed that this could have been done earlier.
“Conway is the kind of batter who is more technically strong and he doesn’t try to play that [many shots] in the air. You saw that in the middle overs also, when he was trying to hit a pull shot also, he was rolling his wrists like a proper technical batsman,” Chawla said on ESPNcricinfo’s TimeOut show.
“That’s where they missed that point. When Shivam [Dube] was trying to hit those bit shots, Conway didn’t even try that. At one point, I felt he just wanted to take it deep. But if you want to take the game deep, you don’t want your [asking] rate to go out of hand.”
“If they wanted to do that, they could have done that at least two-three overs before that also,” Chawla said. “Because if he is not getting those big shots, you want somebody to come in and you want to give that kind of a sighter, at least two to three balls, and then got for it. By the time they retired him out it was too late, I felt.”
Jaffer’s opinion
Wasim Jaffer, meanwhile, said that that the decision was taken so late because of a lack of belief in other options.
“You could have retired him and you could have retired him a little early. But, again, Jadeja was the only one [left]. I don’t think they would have trusted [Vijay Shankar. You needed one more batter there who could have done that [score quickly],” Jaffer said. “But, unfortunately, they didn’t have anybody. Even Jadeja for that matter, he has his restrictions [in terms of how fast he can score].”
What did CSK’s head coach say?
When CSK head coach Stephen Fleming was asked about the same, he believed that the innings did start to lose momentum. However, he did express his satisfaction with the fact that CSK crossed a score of 200 for the first time this season, even if it was in a losing cause.
“We had an innings of substance at the top [from Conway]. In the IPL, you need your top three/four to get a majority of the runs. We haven’t been doing that,” Fleming said. “It was pleasing that we got off to a more solid start. We weren’t able to just maintain a high momentum through the middle, partly good bowling and maybe we were trying to push too hard. It’s something we will review.
“But it’s not a bad chase. About three hits away. But we just lost a bit of momentum through the middle.”