Sunrisers Hyderabad head coach Tom Moody is not worried about pace sensation Umran Malik's sudden lean patch and said his side were doing their best to ensure the youngster learn from experience. Though he has grabbed 15 wickets from eight matches, Malik has returned wicketless in the last three matches with the batters opting for a counter-attacking approach against him. In the match against RCB here on Sunday, Malik leaked 20 runs in his first over as Faf du Plessis and Rajat Patidar went into attacking mode against him.
"It's a real learning experience for him. Looking at the volume of cricket that he has had is very, very minimal really," Moody said after SRH lost by 67 runs.
"So this run of games in a row for him is something that he's not used to. He's not used to playing this regular cricket, the high intensity of the cricket that IPL brings.
"He's on a very steep learning curve. Over the last couple of outings, there's no question that he has not got it right. We are doing our best to support and guide him to learn from these experiences," Moody said.
Faf du Plessis and Rajat Patidar gave RCB a strong start after they lost Virat Kohli off the very first ball of the match and then Dinesh Karthik made full use of his dropped catch to play a superb cameo of 30 not out from eight balls to prop up the total to 192/3.
"It's the small margins that we didn't capitalise on. We should not have been chasing the total that we ended up chasing.
"We dropped two key catches, which cost us. When you miss those small margins, it does make it very difficult for your batting group to go out there and chase a total which is 20-25 runs more than it should have been.
"Then we had a run-out in the very first over and it put us on the backfoot. it did make that run chase even more daunting," he said.
Natarajan, Sundar set for comeback
Left-arm seamer T Natarajan, who is Sunrisers' leading wicket-taker, was once again sorely missed as their spinner Washington Sundar also was ruled out.
With their next match slated after five days, Moody hoped the duo will be available for selection against Kolkata Knight Riders (on May 14).
"Washy, we are hoping, should be available for selection come our next game. Nattu, we are also hoping that he'll be available for that match as well.
"We have a few days in between and both of them will be engaged in training. Hopefully they will feel confident and we'll feel confident to select them," Moody signed off.