With his team in the middle of a virtual free fall after the initial high of beating fancied teams in their first two games,Kolkata Knight Riders coach Dav Whatmore was a worried man on the eve of the game against Kings XI Punjab. But there were a couple of reasons that made the Australian sound optimistic about a possible turnaround of fortunes on Saturday. In the battle of the two teams placed at the bottom of the table,Kolkata are a spot above Kings XI. Besides,Whatmore feels that with David Hussey joining the squad,the teams middle-order will also be strengthened considerably. (David) Hussey gives us depth in the batting. In T20 format,most of the runs are scored by the middle-order batsmen. With Angelo Mathews also contributing with the bat,we hope to set things right. We definitely need more wins under our belt, said Whatmore after practice at the PCA Stadium here. Speaking about the flaws his team still need to iron out,Whatmore stressed that the KKR top order needed to click soon. So far,no Kolkata batsman apart from Owais Shah has crossed the 100 runs aggregate mark. We need more runs on the board. Its a format which does not give batsmen time to relax and most of our batsmen have not clicked as a unit. We need the top order to give us a blazing start, he said. But Whatmore insisted that the Kolkata team cannot be written off. These are still early days in the competition and the sooner we get back our rhythm,it will be good for us. A lot of foreign players will be joining in the latter half of the competition and that will change things, he said. Meanwhile,Hussey was confident of finding his feet early in the tournament. It is the end of summer in Australia and the conditions are the same here in India. It will help me a lot as I will not need much time to adjust to Indian conditions. I had a fine run in the Australian domestic season and and it was great to face the likes of Shane Bond and Angelo Mathews in the nets, said Hussey.
