Chennai, (The Telegraph): Unless Lakshmipathy Balaji has a miraculous recovery, it’s highly unlikely that he’ll feature in Sunday’s final of IPL-V.
“I’m better,” is all that Balaji said on arrival at the team hotel on Friday. His body language didn’t look positive.
After attending the pool session, the Kolkata Knight Riders’s only cricket-related activity of the day, Balaji went home.
Balaji suffered a left hamstring injury on Tuesday, in the Qualifier No.1 clash against the Delhi DareDevils. He’d gone off the field after bowling two overs.
Manoj Tiwary, on the other hand, was in pretty high spirits. That indicated he’d recovered completely from last Saturday’s mild (right) hamstring pull.
The Knights’ opponent hadn’t been identified when The Telegraph spoke to Jacques Kallis, but the superstar quipped: “Let it be anybody…Won’t make a difference.”
As it turned out, with the DareDevils captain, Virender Sehwag, taking the most illogical decisions, the Chennai Super Kings have again marched into the final.
Sunil Narine sounded as confident as Kallis, during a chat while he was selecting pastries at the hotel’s confectionery outlet. Narine and the rest would, of course, have been happier if they didn’t have to travel by bus from Pune to Mumbai and, then, take a flight from there.
“One is really tired,” Narine pointed out.
Meanwhile, according to mental conditioning guru Dr Rudi Webster, the pressure of a final “could get to anybody.”
“Look, there was a time when the pressure even got to (Sir Garry) Sobers… It’s about how you handle it, how you face the challenge…
“I wouldn’t be telling the players anything much,” Dr Webster maintained, speaking exclusively.
In any case, the time for talking is over.
Article source: http://cricket.yahoo.com/news/balaji-unlikely-to-feature-in-final.html
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