CSK coach Stephen Fleming expressed his disappointment over the side failing to chase down 168 against the Kolkata Knight Riders on Wednesday. With five wickets in hand, Chennai Super Kings could only score 157/5 as poor effort from the middle-order cost them two points in the game.
In the post-match conference, Fleming said that they needed one batsman to seem them through to the win.
"Ideally, you want one batsman to bat through. If you give an opening to an IPL team, they've got quality players to take it. Today with Narine holding overs back, it made it very difficult in the end," said the CSK coach.
"You are looking at players going on and making 75 or more and continue that partnership for five more overs, the game would have been a lot more different. KKR hung in there and put pressure on us. We couldn't accelerate in the end. We are disappointed that we let it slip."
The departure of Suresh Raina has been key to CSK's struggles in the batting order but Fleming insisted that it is difficult to slot in another batsman in the playing XI.
"We've got lot of batsmen anyway. We're struggling to use Bravo, so I don't think extra batsman would help," said Fleming. "Sam Curran was also very good. Our challenge is that our two all-rounders are going well, Watson and Faf are doing well, so adding an international bowler is difficult. We're relying on our Indian bowlers."
Karn Sharma played in the place of Piyush Chawla against KKR and returned with decent figures of 2/25, taking wickets of Nitish Rana and Sunil Narine. Fleming heaped praise on the leg-spinner, adding that he could also be used alongside Chawla and Ravindra Jadeja.
"Karn has been waiting for a while for the opportunity. And he came in today, he was a bit unlucky but in the next three he worked really hard and go us back in the game. If he can get some confidence from this, as the pitches get drier, we can use him in combination with Piyush and Jaddu. We might be able to operate with more spinners which we are used to," said Fleming.
However, it was Kedar Jadhav who faced significant criticism over his batting effort in the final overs of the chase. He played 12 balls for an unbeaten 7 as he failed to middle the ball. Fleming defended the decision to send Jadhav above Bravo, saying that they can only look at such things in hindsight.
"Kedar is a middle-to-late batter for India. He faced some balls but it didn't work out. We look at all of these things and think if we could've done it better but it's all in hindsight," said Fleming.
"Kedar could play the off-spinner well and dominate the area. Also Jadeja could finish, but we fell short."
