Axar Patel defends KXIP's decision of playing 3 foreigners against KKR

Kings XI Punjab allrounder Axar Patel has defended his team’s decision to field only 3 overseas players in the match against Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL 2016 encounter last night. KKR’s West Indian import Andre Russell bowled a cracking last over that capped off a memorable spell for him to gift his team a win by 7 runs against Punjab at Eden Gardens in Kolkata. Batting first the hosts scored 164/3 which proved beyond the reach of the visitors though by a narrow margin.

Punjab were off to a disastrous start to their chase as they lost their first 3 wickets for just 13 runs. Aussie Glenn Maxwell (68 off 42) though looked determined to stage a dramatic comeback and hit some superb boundaries. Left-hander Patel smashed 21 off 7 balls including 1 fours and 2 sixes to bring the equation to 11 off 5 however, he was run out in the last over due to a brilliant piece of fielding from Russell that effectively sealed the match for the hosts. Patel blamed his team’s poor start as a reason for their loss and also rued the fact that he couldn’t finish the game off in the last over.

“We had a poor start. We lost three wickets in the first six overs and then it became very difficult. Kolkata fielded really well in the end and that’s where we lost,” Patel said.

Punjab fielded only 3 foreigners in the playing eleven and talking about this strange ploy, Patel defended his team’s decision, “The pitch here is very slow, so we couldn’t play Mitchell Johnson or Kyle Abbott. We had Farhaan Behardien but we also had six bowlers. So we wanted to play a proper batsman. Manan (Vohra) has done well and we wanted to play a pure batsman,” he said.

Patel also dismissed any concerns about the loss against KKR having any effect on the mood in the camp. He opined, “Whenever you lose, obviously, the mood in the camp goes down. After the win against Gujarat, the mood in the camp was very good but after a close loss like this, there isn’t a lot of change. Everyone is trying to stay positive. We cannot think that we’ve lost a few matches and we are out of the tournament.”

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