Kolkata Knight Riders coach Trevor Bayliss today hit out at his batsmen and said their poor form was letting the team down in the sixth edition of the Pepsi Indian Premier League.
Defending champions Knight Riders today lost by four wickets against Chennai Super Kings in a low-scoring affair at the Eden Gardens here to slump to their fourth defeat in the tournament out of six games.
"It was not a great performance from the batting unit. It's been the same problem in almost every game. Our bowling and fielding have been similar to last year, but certainly our batting is letting us down," Bayliss said at the post-match press conference.
Bayliss said KKR batsmen played "school boy" cricket as two run outs led to a disaster with the hosts slipping to 119 for nine from 46 for no loss.
"Those were some school boy errors, as simple as that. Obviously it (the run outs) put a lot of pressure on rest of the guys. It just snowballs and gets worse," he said.
The Knight Riders are now in danger of defending their title as they slipped to the seventh spot in the points table as the coach urged his batsmen to buck up.
"We will have to try and mirror image the character we showed in the bowling and fielding departments. We got to try and transfer that to our batting. We obviously got confidence with our fielding and bowling," Bayliss said.
"The difference between this year and last year was that we put a lot of runs at the top that took the pressure off the middle-order. The guys in the middle-order have not got opportunities as yet," he said.
