Supergiants desperate for home relief

On Friday, Rising Pune Supergiants will play their first home match. Home being Pune, where the players and coaches have not spent much time, barring a few days of training in the preparatory camp. In May, Supergiants will shift their home base to Visakhapatnam, after the Bombay High Court ruled that the IPL will have to leave Maharashtra due to the prevailing drought in the state.

It is a unique challenge the Supergiants face: players are still getting introduced to each other, coaches are still getting familiar with the attitudes, habits and styles of the players, and the management which is grappling to ensure a home-like atmosphere in a scorching summer.

Luckily, Supergiants have two men who have shown they can keep their composure under duress. Stephen Fleming and MS Dhoni, the old pairing of coach and captain for Chennai Super Kings, are at the helm for Supergiants. After consecutive losses, the questions have started to pile but Supergiants' two leading men are not getting ruffled. Unlike for Super Kings, Fleming and Dhoni are still figuring out their best combinations for Supergiants.

"We have had to work very hard off the field, getting to know people and systems, the way we want to play," Fleming said ahead of their first home match against Royal Challengers Bangalore. "Even the last game (against Kings XI Punjab), we introduced some new players just to try and find out some more information on the best combination for us moving forward. That is one of the greatest challenges as a new side - we don't have the nucleus of players who have played together. So we start a little bit back. It is not an excuse, but it just means we have to be very specific with what we do, the teams we put out. It is going to have real purpose," Fleming said.

In their defeat to Kings XI, Supergiants made three changes, bringing in Thisara Perera, Irfan Pathan and Ankit Sharma for Mitchell Marsh, Rajat Bhatia and RP Singh. The failures of the inclusions have added to Supergiants' headaches. However, Fleming is more concerned about the misfiring middle order.

Supergiants' top order - comprising Faf du Plessis, Ajinkya Rahane and Kevin Pietersen - have laid platforms for the middle order with consistent starts, but Supergiants have finished with a sub-par total in both their losses. Du Plessis has scored two half-centuries, Rahane has one fifty and Pietersen has got starts in all the three matches.

"Our first 10 overs of each game so far have been very good. We just haven't really kicked on to turn a 155 score into 180. We've got the power to do that. I guess it is just the faith and confidence to make sure the guys in the second half of the innings finish off the work that has been done in the first half. Faf is in good form, Pietersen, they've all had contributions. Rahane, Smith in the last game. So they have all had a contribution," Fleming said.

Another factor in Supergiants' two defeats was the dominance of the opposition in the Powerplay. Chasing 164 for victory, Aaron Finch and Brendon McCullum put Gujarat Lions in a strong position with an 83-run opening stand off just 51 balls. In their next match, Kings XI's opening pair of M Vijay and Manan Vohra put on an attacking 97-run stand in the chase of 153.

"That is probably another area we can get better at. I thought in the game in Rajkot, we were a little bit off in the first six," Fleming said. "But it is still about bowlers getting used to bowling in partnerships, and how the captain wants to use spin or pace or seam. So there are a lot of questions we have.

"We are trying very hard to accelerate that process so that we get good information going forward as to what is the best looking combinations we can put out. At the moment, we are working hard on the combinations and making sure the players are individually as good as they can be."