Picture Credit: Ireland Cricket
With only a few days left for the curtain-raiser of the 15th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), teams don't want to miss out on anything. The preparations for them have already begun and defending champions CSK are leading the way. The MS Dhoni and co. have already landed in Surat and have kickstarted their practice. While the players sweat hard in the nets, the management is ensuring to make all sorts of resources available.
And with a sword hanging on the availability of CSK's most expensive player in the auction, Deepak Chahar, the management has decided to include Ireland's Josh Little as the net bowler. Cricket Ireland confirmed the development through a Tweet on Tuesday. The Ireland cricket board congratulated Little for this little achievement and also hoped that this experience works for the lanky pacer. "Congrats to Josh Little who is heading off on a development opportunity with the Chennai Super Kings in the early stages of the upcoming IPL. The experience as a net bowler for CSK should be fantastic," tweeted Cricket Ireland.
Why Josh Little?
The CSK management has a nick of investing in young talents, and Little may be one of those players who CSK wants to keep for the future. The Ireland pacer has shown promise in the early stages of his career. He has claimed 31 wickets in 34 T20Is at an average of 29.48 and an economy rate of 7.49. His ODI numbers are also promising. Little has 30 wickets from 19 games at an average of 28.90. In T20s, the left-arm quick has 54 wickets from the same number of games but at a better average and economy rate (25.51 and 7.2 respectively).
The biggest advantage with Josh Little is that he bowls left-arm and a lot of Indian batters struggle against left-arm bowlers. So, the idea behind having him in the nets may be to prepare the CSK batters to get ready for challenges from bowlers like Trent Boult, Tymal Mills, Mustafizur Rahman, and other quality lefties.