With no Kane Williamson featuring in the playing XI for SRH, the David Warner-led franchise faced a lot of flak on Sunday during their IPL 2021 opener against KKR. At the toss, Warner merely mentioned that Williamson is not in the XI without being specific about the reason. Now, SRH coach Trevor Bayliss has revealed the reason why Williamson did not feature in the XI.
Bayliss reckoned that Williamson needs more time to get match fit and that seems to be the reason why he did not play at Chennai on Sunday. The SRH coach also said that the NZ captain needs more time in the nets.
“We just felt that Kane needed a little bit of extra time to get match fit and a little bit more time in the nets,” Bayliss said after the game.
Confident that Kane would be a big part of the squad during the tournament, Bayliss also admitted that had Williamson played, he would have been in the side in place of Jonny Bairstow – who hit a fifty at No 4 vs KKR.
“He would have played in place of Jonny Bairstow obviously if that had occurred. But we aren’t too perturbed about that, Jonny has been in form recently in white-ball cricket here in India. Kane will obviously come into calculations as the tournament unfolds,” he added.
Meanwhile, Kolkata beat Hyderabad by 10 runs to get their campaign off to a winning start. Nitish Rana was named the man of the match for his brilliant 80 off 56 balls.
“I didn’t think there were that many runs on this wicket. They adapted really well, had a good partnership. We failed to execute the first ball of most overs and then conceded a lot at the end. We lost early wickets, and Jonny and Manish got us in a good position, so we had our chances,” David Warner said after the match.