'Don't play Harshal Patel' - Aakash Chopra gives six suggestion to IPL teams ahead of UAE leg

The second phase of the Indian Premier League is all set to kick off in the UAE in a few days’ time wherein the opening clash will take place between Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians. Ahead of the high-profile tournament, former Indian cricketer and commentator Aakash Chopra has suggested six interesting suggestions to all the teams.

Chopra made his first point as to play exclusively fast pacers and avoid medium pacers. He added that RCB should avoid playing Harshal Patel and instead go with the likes of Navdeep Saini and Mohammed Siraj. Chopra made his second point to go with batting first after winning the toss as chasing cannot be the mantra in the UAE as teams thought it in the 2020 season and failed.

“Play fast bowlers with speeds of over 137-140 kph, don’t go for medium pacers. Fast bowlers with speeds above 140 kph have enjoyed a better average, economy rate, and strike rate than the slower ones. This means the pitches are helping the bowlers with pace. So, I’ll say don’t play Harshal (Patel) and instead go with Navdeep and Siraj who have pace. Play (Josh) Hazlewood over (DJ) Bravo. and go for proper fast bowlers over those who swing the ball,” said Chopra on his YouTube channel.

While making his third point, Chopra added that teams should go with those spinners who are quicker in the air for eg Varun Chakravarthy and Rashid Khan. Moving to his fourth point, Chopra suggested to chose proper openers against the likes of pinch hitters.

The 4th point is to play proper, proper openers: Aakash Chopra

“The 4th point is to play proper, proper openers. If you are thinking of opening with pinch hitters or ‘trying something new’, don’t do that. The first 30 matches here showed that there were a lot of dot balls at the start and at least 2 wickets fell in the powerplay. So, in such a scenario you need proper openers with proper techniques,” added Chopra.

Moving to his final points, Chopra suggested teams to go with left armers as they were quite successful in the first 30 games as per his analysis. The former cricketer finally told teams to look to score above 180 runs while batting first as anything over 170-175 gets impossible to chase.