IPL 2021: Chris Gayle should have opened against Mumbai Indians – Deep Dasgupta

Former Indian wicket-keeper batsman Deep Dasgupta believes Chris Gayle should have opened the innings against Mumbai Indians at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium, Abu Dhabi on Tuesday.

Punjab Kings had to leave out Mayank Agarwal due to stiff back and included Mandeep Singh in place of the Karnataka batsman.

PBKS mostly opens the innings with KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal and it was expected that Chris Gayle will open the innings with the team’s captain in absence of Agarwal. However, Mandeep Singh was backed as an opener by the PBKS management. In fact, the team also had the option of opening with Aiden Markram, who scored a fluent knock of 42 runs off just 29 balls.

While speaking on his YouTube channel, Dasgupta said: “Till now, the start of Punjab it was KL Rahul being the anchor and holding the innings from one end as long as he can and Mayank playing the shots from the word go and giving them momentum. When Mayank is not there, you have Gayle and Markram and have opened in the format before. Despite these two players being present, Punjab opted to go with Mandeep Singh. Gayle should have opened and played the role of aggressor, that Mayank used to do.”

Meanwhile, Mandeep Singh got off to a start as he scored 15 runs but could not convert it into a substantial score. Chris Gayle, on the other hand, was dismissed after scoring a solitary run as he was dismissed by Kieron Pollard when he attempted to play a big shot but holed out at long-on.

Punjab Kings could only manage to post 135 runs on the board after Rohit Sharma won the toss and elected to bowl first and thus they were at least 20 runs short of a par score.

On the other hand, while reviewing the afternoon match, Dasgupta feels Delhi Capitals should have been more aggressive while playing against KKR other bowlers except for Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine.

“Pant had already said at the toss that he would be happy with 150 in the first innings. You have to consider that you have to face 8 overs of quality spin on a surface like this. So, you must try to get around 45 runs off those 2 bowlers and 90-100 runs off the rest. DC managed to score 42 against Narine and Chakravarthy, where I felt DC could have scored 5-7 runs more. The remaining 12 overs should have at least brought 90-100 runs.”