Former India player Ajay Jadeja stated that David Warner might be “kicking himself” at this point, seeing Kolkata Knight Riders keep their trust in Eoin Morgan as skipper despite his poor form with the bat.
Unlike Sunrisers Hyderabad with Warner, KKR have persisted with Morgan and not contemplated dropping him from captaincy on the grounds of inapt batting returns in this year’s edition of the IPL.
The England international has now made just 109 runs from 11 innings of the IPL 2021 with an embarrassing average of 10.90 and strike-rate of 100.92. However, at no stage of the tournament so far have the Knight Riders suggested that they are losing their patience with the left-hander considering he is holding one of the important four overseas slots.
This is in direct contrast with SRH, where Warner was removed from captaincy – despite historically being their most successful skipper and batter – earlier this year and has been dropped from the playing XI twice in the 2021 edition of the Premier League.
Warne has better numbers for the season than Morgan – an average of 24.37 for 195 runs at a strike-rate of 107.73 – but, unlike Morgan with KKR, he has had zero respites from SRH team management.
Jadeja, speaking on Cricbuzz, took note of this and quite cheekily said:
“After watching Morgan’s performance and his numbers, David Warner would have been kicking himself. He (Warner) would have felt bad and said, ‘Look at Morgan’s poor numbers.'”
In KKR’s latest outing versus Punjab Kings in Dubai on Friday, Morgan made just 2 runs before being out LBW when his team badly needed their middle-order stalwart to guide the team to a more competitive total.
While there are calls outside for Morgan’s removal from the playing XI, Jadeja backed the man to come out of his rut, saying the left-hander “knows his game inside out and has a sense of cricket.”
Jadeja added he hopes for KKR’s sake that Morgan does well in the near future, as defeat against PBKS has only made the playoff race tougher for them.
KKR are still fourth in the IPL 2021 points table but with only five wins from their 12 matches and need to win their last two league matches to have a chance of securing the top four berth.
