India bowling coach Morne Morkel on Friday highlighted the need to manage young seam-bowling all-rounder Nitish Kumar Reddy with care, saying he possesses all the requisite attributes to excel across departments if given a clear role and consistent opportunities. After looking slightly rusty in his comeback game on September 13, Reddy quickly found his bowling rhythm in the subsequent matches, though he is yet to make an impact with the bat.
Reddy bounced back strongly from a recent quadriceps injury layoff by picking up six wickets in second and third T20Is against Afghanistan in New Delhi earlier this month.
India bowling coach Morne Morkel on Friday highlighted the need to manage young seam-bowling all-rounder Nitish Kumar Reddy with care, saying he possesses all the requisite attributes to excel across departments if given a clear role and consistent opportunities.
Reddy was then pulled out of the Asian Games men’s T20 squad with an aim to give him crucial game time in the ODI series against the West Indies starting on Sunday. He’s got all the talent and all the ability to do that, but for us it’s just important to manage him quite well, to give him quite a simple role in terms of what he needs to go and do for the team,” Morkel told reporters in a press conference on Friday. “Luckily, we do have a bit of time now, and it will be great for Indian cricket if we can keep on developing him and for him to compete for that all-rounder spot. Addressing concerns over player fitness, which has been a recurring theme of late, Morkel assured that the team’s management, in coordination with the medical staff, is constantly monitoring workloads to ensure key all-rounders like Hardik Pandya and Harshit Rana return to peak fitness. But there’s definitely a plan for each and every individual, and we’ll keep on monitoring that and coming up with the best way forward to give the selectors and to give everybody the best sort of group to pick from,” he added. But ideally, hopefully we can get all the injuries out of the way and later down the year we’ll be fine, and we can take it from there,” he added. Assessing the playing surface at Greenfield International Stadium, Morkel predicted a high-scoring contest based on his assessment during the team’s training session. “For me, it’s my second time also at the venue here. My last outing was the T20 against New Zealand, and it was quite a high-scoring game. “I expect a high-scoring game, and both teams play a very attacking brand of cricket.
“So that’s part of our job to sit with the medical side and map that out. So, I think it’s just going to be the team that can sum up the conditions best in that first 15 to 20 overs, whether or not the ball is still new,” he concluded.
“But luckily, like I said, we’ve got fantastic backup in the wings, and it’s a great opportunity for the guys to go and play a game for India, to make a name for themselves and to compete.
