‘A player is the direct product of environment’ – Assistant coach Mithun Manhas details how GT helped Yash Dayal overcome horrific KKR game

Gujarat Titans assistant coach Mithun Manhas divulged how the team management of GT assisted young pacer Yash Dayal in getting past the horrors of his match against Kolkata Knight Riders. It is to be noted that Dayal was devastated after the match as he failed to defend 29 runs in the last over. Rinku Singh hit the left-arm bowler for five consecutive sixes to chase down the target of 205 runs in the last over of the match.

Ever since then, the 25-year-old did not get a chance to feature in the playing 11 as well as he was not even picked in the substitutes. Hence, it raised a lot of questions about his place in the team despite the support that he had received from the team following the disheartening final over against KKR. When the skipper of GT, Hardik Pandya was asked about the absence of Dayal, then he mentioned that the left-arm pacer lost weight after his illness following the KKR game.

Finally, the assistant coach Manhas came up with a statement regarding the process that the team management had put in to help out the pacer. He compared the grooming of the players to the process in which one nurtures a flower. He even pointed out the fact that for the two months of the IPL, the entire team is like a family and if there is transparency, then the players can express themselves easily which will eventually make it easier to help them out.

“A player is the direct product of the environment. You have to nurture him. It’s like a flower. If there’s something (wrong) with the flower, you just don’t pluck it and throw it away. You need to nurture it, similarly, you need to take care of the boys – physically and mentally. You are like a family for two months. If you understand them and they trust you, there’s nothing like that because then they will open up to you. Then it’s easy to take care of them,” said Manhas in a post-match presser as quoted by India Today.

We just want Hardik to be 100 percent match fit: Manhas

When asked about Hardik Pandya not bowling in the matches against Mumbai Indians last week as well as in the last home game against Sunrisers Hyderabad, the GT’s assistant coach cleared that the team has many bowling options and that the team management wanted to give a break to Pandya before big games.

“Hardik is pretty much okay. We still have the liberty to give him rest and we have the options and that’s why he’s not bowling. Otherwise, he would have bowled. He’s pretty much fine, and we just want him to be fit 100 percent. He’s just giving himself some extra time, that’s all,” Manhas added.