SOUTH Africans loom large on the batting hit parade early in this year's Indian Premier League but are conspicuously low on the bowling charts.
The T20 format's regulations weight the game in favour of batsmen, but Justin Kemp said moving the tournament from India to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had further tilted the balance away from bowlers.
"You've got to take the grounds into consideration," Kemp said. "I was watching the game between Rajasthan and Punjab [on Sunday], and Sharjah is pretty small and the pitch is flat."
Similar conditions prevail at the other venues in Dubai and Abu Dhabi which, with Sharjah, will host the first 20 of the 60 matches that will be played in this year's IPL. Games in the first two weeks of the tournament were moved from India because they clashed with the Indian elections and the government could not guarantee security for the event.
Kemp, who played for the Chennai Super Kings in the 2010 IPL, expected the gap between batsmen and bowlers to narrow once the tournament moved to India on May 2.
"In India, you get more diversity in the type of wickets you play on compared to the UAE."
JP Duminy and David Miller were among only four players who had reached 100 runs in their first two games going into yesterday's match between Chennai and the Delhi Daredevils in Abu Dhabi.
On the bowling front, South Africans did not feature in the top five in terms of wicket takers, average, strike rate or economy rate. Only two were in the top 10 - Morne Morkel was eighth among wicket takers and Dale Steyn was sixth in terms of strike rate and seventh in the averages.
SA bowlers struggle in IPL
SOUTH Africans loom large on the batting hit parade early in this year's Indian Premier League but are conspicuously low on the bowling charts.
The T20 format's regulations weight the game in favour of batsmen, but Justin Kemp said moving the tournament from India to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had further tilted the balance away from bowlers.
"You've got to take the grounds into consideration," Kemp said. "I was watching the game between Rajasthan and Punjab [on Sunday], and Sharjah is pretty small and the pitch is flat."
Similar conditions prevail at the other venues in Dubai and Abu Dhabi which, with Sharjah, will host the first 20 of the 60 matches that will be played in this year's IPL. Games in the first two weeks of the tournament were moved from India because they clashed with the Indian elections and the government could not guarantee security for the event.
Kemp, who played for the Chennai Super Kings in the 2010 IPL, expected the gap between batsmen and bowlers to narrow once the tournament moved to India on May 2.
"In India, you get more diversity in the type of wickets you play on compared to the UAE."
JP Duminy and David Miller were among only four players who had reached 100 runs in their first two games going into yesterday's match between Chennai and the Delhi Daredevils in Abu Dhabi.
On the bowling front, South Africans did not feature in the top five in terms of wicket takers, average, strike rate or economy rate. Only two were in the top 10 - Morne Morkel was eighth among wicket takers and Dale Steyn was sixth in terms of strike rate and seventh in the averages.
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