Nepal’s Sandeep Lamichhane is now two matches old in the 2018 Indian Premier League and his overall figures of 8-0-46-2 is something any franchise will be happy with, considering that they have come against the top batsmen in the world including the likes of Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers (Both Royal Challengers Bangalore) and Shane Watson, Suresh Raina, Ambati Rayadu, MS Dhoni & Ravindra Jadeja (Chennai Super Kings).
His four overs of spell which contained all the batsmen in the Super Kings line-up allowed the rest of the attack for Delhi Daredevils to go for the kill on a slowish track at Feroz Shah Kotla in New Delhi. Delhi Daredevils defended the total of 162, restricting Chennai Super Kings to 128 to win the match by 34 runs to end a long-run of defeats and brought about massive smiles on the faces of their fans.
Sandeep’s lone wicket came when Suresh Raina tried to go over the top but could get enough elevation and could not clear the boundary. The rest of his spell saw the batsmen playing him out for singles and with odd big shots and this will help his confidence even more as he will definitely start Delhi Daredevils final match of the IPL season.
Credit to Delhi Daredevils coaching staff for continuously working with Sandeep throughout the IPL season to get him match ready and credit to him for taking the opportunities with both hands to impress the management and if not retained for 2019 IPL during the IPL auctions, Delhi will most likely use the RTM (Right-to-Match) card for him for sure. After all, a product worth their investment for 2018.
However, Sandeep is a work in progress. He is not a finished product yet and it will take him couple of more seasons to get battle-hardened as teams and players start picking him up easily with every team now having good enough video footage to make their plans of scoring off his bowling. There’s not much variations in his arsenal that he has shown so far and he needs to develop a lot including varying his pace on his googlies and wrong-one’s.
