Bowling coach Shane Bond answered the press’ questions ahead of our fourth league match of Tata IPL 2022 against the Royal Challengers Bangalore.

The Kiwi spoke about being motivated for what is a crucial encounter, what he is working on with the bowlers and being impressed by the performances of young players.

“Motivation is not something that I need to work on with these guys, we are all motivated. Every time we play RCB, it’s always a fun game. Motivation and energy is always expected,” stated Bond.

“One training session or five overs of skill work is not gonna change things, the change that we want is from the mind. It’s about how we stick to our plans under pressure. We have experienced bowlers who have played international cricket so they just have to make that mental shift and I’m sure the result will go our way.”

The former pacer revealed that all he had talked to the bowlers about was to remember the plans against specific players and stick to those.

“The bowling has been a mixed bag for us, we have taken out some big players. But when the game is in the balance, we have given away a few overs that cost 20+ which won’t win us games. All I have told them is to execute our plans well and make it as hard as we can. The challenge for us is to do that when the pressure is on,” said Bond.

Our Aussie pacer Daniel Sams had a rough time in the game vs KKR and with former players like Bond and Zak among the coaching staff, their advice to him has been to do what he does best.

“Daniel is an experienced player and he will admit that he is disappointed with his performance. It’s the nature of T20 to be hit-and-miss, every player at some point is going to be disappointed. The only way you can deal with it is to get back to work, get back to doing what he does well and hopefully, he can turn it around,” noted Bond.

“Whether it’s Daniel or anyone else, our message has always been to stick together, the support for each other is always strong and it is no different in this case.”

Despite an undesirable start to the season, Bond was happy about the performances of young guns like Tilak Varma - who has played three good knocks - and Dewald Brevis - who shifted the momentum in his Tata IPL debut last time out.

“Seeing someone like Tilak come in and play the way he has is not surprising in terms of his talent and he has fit in seamlessly. It’s the same with Dewald - it’s one thing to have talent and another to do that in a game but he did that very well in the last game. I take a great deal of heart from the way these two have started and there are other players who are waiting for a chance to do well when they get that opportunity,” he said.

Shane Bond summed up the squad pretty well and we are looking forward to seeing how we bounce back in the next game vs RCB.