Stephen Fleming Defends MS Dhoni on Rising Pune Supergiants Poor Run

By: Tarish Bhatt

Rising Pune Supergiants coach Stephen Fleming has defended captain MS Dhoni for his team’s poor performance in the ongoing Indian Premier League.

The Supergiants are out of the IPL playoff contention, after losing eight of their 11 matches so far, and are currently placed at the bottom of the points’ table.

Fleming has, meanwhile, insisted that it is not easy to create a squad from scratch, and working with new players, in a new team is a different ball game altogether.

The Supergiants coach defending his captain saying that MS Dhoni don’t have a luxury of a settled unit like he had with now-defunct Chennai Super Kings.

“Having them worked together in a team is a much different dynamic,” Fleming said. “It’s been challenging. Probably the batting has been passable but we struggled a bit in bowling under different conditions.”

“We had to work hard. When you’re captain looking to get everything out of your team, you push very hard.” he added. “This is been a good challenge.”

The Supergiants have also suffered plenty of injury blows in their debut season. They lost Faf du Plessis, Steve Smith, Kevin Pietersen and Mitchell Marsh to injuries.