Mumbai Indian batting coach Kieron Pollard has backed young opener Ishan Kishan to regain form and hopes to get big scores in coming matches for the Indian Premier League. The stylish wicketkeeper batter failed with the bat in Mumbai Indians' opening match against Gujarat Titans. Kishan faced four balls on Sunday and was dismissed for a duck by Azmatullah Omarzai.
The wicketkeeper batter has been under the scanners in recent times after he was removed from the BCCI central contract's list. Kishan withdrew his name from the South Africa tour due to mental fatigue as he later avoided the BCCI's order to play in Ranji Trophy which backfired for him.
Pollard decided to keep his mum on the controversy regarding Kishan's ouster from the Indian team.
“I don’t understand the controversial circumstances. You have stated clearly as to why he wasn’t playing so I guess we need to take that into consideration. Everything as a player and individual as well, playing international sports is very very tough, it’s not very easy as people would think,” Pollard said in the post-match press conference.
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The veteran West Indies star has backed Kishan to bounce back and regain his form in the remaining matches of the cash-rich league.
{{/usCountry}}The veteran West Indies star has backed Kishan to bounce back and regain his form in the remaining matches of the cash-rich league.
{{/usCountry}}“For him, again, he did not score tonight so, we can look at all sorts of different things, but I said it’s a long tournament, he is an experienced guy within our setup and we expect big things from Ishan, he is in a good space, he has been practicing well and has been doing fairly decently, so hopefully within the next couple of games, you can see great performances from him and all of you will continue to laud his brains when he does that,” Pollard added.
Meanwhile, Mumbai Indians also started the campaign with a close 6-run defeat under the new captaincy regime of Hardik Pandya. It was MI's 12 loss on a trott in the opening encounter of the IPL season as he last started their campaign with a win way back in 2012. In the thrilling match, Mumbai batters failed to hold their nerves in the slog overs as Gujarat Titans bowlers hunted in a pack to register their first win under new skipper Shubman Gill.