| Mumbai: Kolkata Knight Riders’ rivals are not taking them lightly.
“In Twenty20, you need to play consistent cricket. They (KKR) certainly have the players and we’ll be wary of them,” Darren Lehmann, the Australian coach of the Deccan Chargers, the Knights’ opponents in the tournament opener on Friday, said.
Both the Chargers and the Knights went through a rigorous net session at the D.Y. Patil stadium, the match venue. While Lehmann’s team chose to sweat it out in the afternoon heat, Dav Whatmore’s side opted for the relatively cooler conditions under the floodlights.
The batsmen, without exception, were seen making a conscious effort to get into the T20 mode. That, however, did not stop Ishant Sharma and Mashrafe Mortaza from troubling the batsmen. Whatmore would have been happy to see their pacers hit the right line and length.
Lehmann was a little concerned about the fact that the team had lost their home advantage as their matches had been shifted out of Hyderabad. “We can’t control that. We would have liked to see fans from Hyderabad to come and watch us play. We hope some of them will travel to with the team,” the 40-year-old said.
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