Vadodara: India's bowling coach Venkatesh Prasad has praised the Rest of India's bowlers, particularly Munaf Patel, for restricting Ranji Trophy champions Delhi to 177 in their first innings in the on-going Irani Cup match at the Reliance Stadium.
"Rest bowlers struck to the right areas and exploited the limited conditions. It was good to see Munaf bowl with some hostility. He surprised the Delhi batsmen with his vicious in-cutters and struck to a good line and length throughout his spell," Prasad said.
"One needs to watch Munaf very closely. He has the knack of studying the opposition batsmen to perfection and then bowl to their weakness. Even a little bit of slackness from the batsmen is completely exploited by the seamer and that is the main reason for his consistent performance," the former Karnataka star added.
"Delhi has a good batting line-up and to restrict them to 177 was a very good effort. Even the spinners complimented their medium pacers while the close-in fielding was exceptionally good. So all in all it was a satisfying performance by them on Thursday even though only half the work is done so far and hopefully they will continue with the same intensity and confidence in the second innings as well," he observed.
Meanwhile, the Delhi bowlers were slightly handicapped with the absence of their bowling coach and former Indian seamer Manoj Prabhakar, who could not be with the team due to personal reasons.
The importance of a bowling coach was felt with Prasad's total involvement with the team.
He is the first person on the ground in the morning and the last person to take the team bus at the end of the day. He makes it a point that his bowlers, including skipper Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh, bowl at a single wicket for more than half an hour every day during the match days.