Upbeat VB Veerans meet Madurai today

Stand-in skipper Malolan Rangarajan, who addressed the media on Sunday, admitted the absence of Aparajith would be felt but the team was raring to go. “Our bench strength is good though replacing someone like him is going to be tough. There are very few players in Tamil Nadu, who can play like him,” said Malolan. 

“One good thing about our team is there aren’t many known names, but they all have the capability to surprise many teams. So we are looking to replace him with our bench strength. I am pretty confident they will do well,” he added. 

Malolan said the team got a very good start but it did not get a practice session here because of rain. “Luckily we could squeeze in one session today. 

Otherwise, the boys have been upbeat and we are looking forward to our next game against the Madurai Super Giants,” he said. Malolan said it did not matter if his team was playing on Dindigul, where Madurai supporters would be more in number. 

“Even if there are 100 supporters for our team, we would feel we have crowd support. There will be 3000 supporters cheering for the local team,” Malolan said.

Malolan said in two matches at Dindigul, there were two different results. “In Saturday’s match Dindigul Dragons scored 140-odd in 18 overs and everyone thought Madurai will chase it down. But Dindigul bowled well and restricted the opponents. So we can’t really say that it is a batsmen’s pitch because we saw bowlers coming into play as well. In our match, Aparajith took away the game with his batting. Can’t really say, but it is conducive to batting,” he said.