Stephen Fleming devastated after the loss against Mumbai Indians

Stephen Fleming, the former New Zealand captain and coach of the Chennai Super Kings, is extremely disappointed at his team’s performance in their opening fixture of the sixth season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) against Mumbai Indians at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, Chepauk, Chennai, and admitted that his side did not deserve to win the match.

Ricky Ponting, the Mumbai skipper, won the toss and elected to bat first. Thanks to a brilliant half-century by Kieron Pollard, the visitors posted a competitive total of 148 runs on the board for the loss of six wickets.

In the presence of a number of world-class batsmen like Murali Vijay, Suresh Raina, Michael Hussey, Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Dwayne Bravo, the Super Kings were expected to chase down the total without much of a fuss.

However, Dhoni and company failed to live up to the expectations and managed merely 139 runs in their allotted 20 overs for the loss of nine wickets, falling short by nine runs.

The former Kiwi skipper expressed that Mumbai bowled well but the home team should have achieved the target. Fleming feels that most of the Chennai batsmen threw away their wickets at crucial junctures of the game.

“The pitch was fine. The score was achievable and at half time we were pretty comfortable. I must say the batting was below standard, considering the experience in our line-up,” the coach said. “Some of the dismissals were truly out of character. It is not acceptable. Mumbai bowled well and they did enough to put pressure on us. We do not like to see our batsmen out of character.”

The former left-handed batsman wants his team to improve in the upcoming encounters, if they have any chance of qualifying for the play-offs.

“It is not about harsh words. It is a reality check. To be honest, I am not a coach to blow things up but I was disappointed with the nature of our dismissals. We did not deserve to win this game,” he added.

Chennai will play their next fixture against Kings XI Punjab on Wednesday at Mohali.

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Posted by Yasir Hashmi on Apr 8 2013. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.