Hussey preaches 'collective smarts' to overcome fielding, top-order concerns

Michael Hussey played for Chennai Super Kings three days after his 40th birthday in the IPL 2015 final. In that game, he sprinted across the turf to keep a Kieron Pollard drive down to two, prompting Sunil Gavaskar lead a passionate on-air discussion about age being just a number. They say T20 cricket moves quickly these days. Three years since, Hussey has returned as the team's batting coach and now observes many of his colleagues shackled by the mischief of father time.

The problem for this batch of 2018 is not that it has too many over-30 players in the squad, but just how many of them proved to be surprisingly lethargic on the field in the season opener against Mumbai. Even Dwayne Bravo, in possession of an IPL fielding highlight reel of his own, was gesticulated at angrily by MS Dhoni for failing to move quickly from long-on to stop a boundary. After another four in his direction, Bravo was duly moved inside the circle with Suresh Raina replacing him at the ropes. By the end of the evening, after moving around the likes of Imran Tahir, Kedar Jadhav and Shane Watson multiple times, the CSK skipper begrudgingly moved pacer Mark Wood to backward point.

From once having a fit Jadeja-Raina-McCullum-Du Plessis axis on the off-side ring, Chennai Super Kings have come to temper their expectations of ground fielding, with Hussey asking the team to use its collective smarts to overcome a glaring deficiency. "I think it's going to be one of the challenges of the team. We do have some older players in the team," Hussey said ahead of Super Kings' first home game.

"We're not going to be the most nimble or dynamic team in the field. But we can still be smart in the field. In the field there is room for improvement and there are some key areas that we're focussing on, in particular the movement. Even if the ball goes to one section of the ground, we want players in other sections moving into areas to help out," he added.

Hussey extended this 'collective smarts' theory as a possible measure to address the batting wobble that saw Chennai slip to 84 for 6 in what should have been a straightforward chase in Mumbai. The onus, according to the former CSK opener, was on the top-four, more so after the loss of Jadhav to a hamstring injury "Losing Kedar is a big loss. He's a class, class player. He was coming back from an injury and he is injured again. It's a big hole for us to fill," he said.

"We feel like we've got the necessary backup or depth to be able to cover it. It's certainly going to be a focus going forward. The players at the top of the order, Nos. 1-4, need to take the responsibility to try and score the bulk of the runs. The game against Mumbai I thought we did okay early but then we lost some key wickets at the end of the powerplay and leading into the next phase. That's certainly the focus of the team going forward, to play some smart cricket at top and then try to keep some good partnership in the middle-order. We've got the players to cover it but we need to play smart."

Hussey also didn't see the team's average age of 32 shortchanging their chances against Kolkata Knight Riders, who have looked the other way in this experience-v-youth debate at the auction. "Some people see that as a negative, but I actually see that as a positive," Hussey said. "I think that experience that we were talking about is important in T20 cricket and that experienced players can often be the difference between winning and losing T20 games. Because [of] that experience, they've been in all tough situations before, they know how to handle the pressure.

"I think the best teams generally have some good experienced players but you do need the exuberance of youth as well. Sometimes the fearlessness of youth can be a bonus. I don't think that will be the difference between winning and losing. In my mind, it all boils down to which team can execute their skills under pressure. From both teams, I think we have some highly skilled players and we should see hopefully a great contest."