IPL 2020: Mohammad Kaif admits ‘pressure on players’ after DC’s four-match losing streak in road to playoffs

Mohammad Kaif, the Delhi Capitals’ assistant coach, stated that the DC players are feeling the pinch to some extent as far as qualifying for the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 playoffs is concerned. On Saturday, October 31, Shreyas Iyer and Co lost their fourth match in succession, going down to the Mumbai Indians (MI) by nine wickets at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium.

Kaif, who’s also a former Indian cricketer, said that the team dropped their guard down a wee bit, assuming qualification without much fuss. However, if the Capitals lose their last league game against the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), they stand a chance of elimination.

Also, since DC lost to MI with 34 balls to spare, their net run rate went to the negatives and is worse than Kings XI Punjab (KXIP). DC and RCB will be playing the last league game of the ongoing edition of the cash-rich T20 extravaganza.

DC have to fight it out against RCB, says Mohammad Kaif

“Players are feeling a bit of pressure, that can happen, we expect that, we are trying to keep the team together, at some stage you will lose form and struggle for it but we are still backing our main players, we did not expect that it might come down to net run-rate, we thought we might qualify easily, now we have to fight it out against RCB,” Kaif told in the post-match press conference.

Earlier, the likes of Ishant Sharma and Amit Mishra got ruled out of the tournament due to injuries. Bearing in mind their experience, the mishaps weakened their bowling attack to a large extent. Kaif stated that losing the veterans in the middle of the league didn’t help their cause by any means.

“We had a good start, probably we relaxed a bit in the middle and injury to Ishant and Amit Mishra did not help, we had to try uncapped Indian players, that’s why we could not get our eleven going, it is a tough tournament, we have probably lost the rhythm probably but we are looking to our next match against RCB, we hope to win that and qualify for the playoffs,” he added.