England wicket-keeper batsman Sam Billings feels the upcoming IPL will be good preparation for the T20 World Cup later this 12 months however conceded that he will get restricted sport time because of the ‘phenomenal’ competitors in the Delhi Capitals’ squad.
The 29-year-old was purchased by Delhi Capitals for Rs 2 crore on the mini-auction final month. “You look at the squad that Delhi have, and especially the overseas options: you could go with any combination and it would be a successful one,” Billings advised ESPNCricinfo.
“The competition for places is phenomenal: they obviously got to the final last year, so game time might be limited, but it comes back to the point of preparing for a World Cup and giving myself the best chance in these conditions to prepare for that,” he added.
Delhi, who completed runners up in the earlier version, are spoilt for selection in the abroad gamers division. Last 12 months, their go-to mixture was South African pacers Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortje, Australian all-rounder Marcus Stoinis and big-hitting West Indian Shimron Hetmyer.
This 12 months they’ve added former Australian skipper Steve Smith, England’s Tom Curran and Billings into the squad. Billings, who was a part of the Delhi franchise in 2016 and 2017 as properly, recalled the primary time he bought a glimpse of the flamboyant Indian wicketkeeper batsman Rishabh Pant.
‘Rishabh Pant was unbelievable’
“With Pant, I performed with him for two years once I was in Delhi. I turned to Rahul Dravid and requested ‘who is this kid?’
“He was smacking Nathan Coulter-Nile, Chris Morris, Rabada everywhere in the open net. I was just thinking ‘this is unbelievable!’ and that year he lit up. It’s been great to see him evolve as a cricketer and to be in the same team as him again would be great,” Billings stated.
The right-handed batsman from Kent is raring to staff up with India spinners Ravichandran Ashwin and Axar Patel, who snared 32 and 27 wickets respectively in the recently-concluded Test sequence towards England.
“Facing these two spinners in the nets is without doubt one of the nice issues concerning the IPL, and different franchise competitions.
“(If) you face these guys day in, day out in testing conditions, you’re going to get better – it’s impossible not to. That’s a huge plus point…I’ll be writing a few notes about a few different cricketers that I see about,” he added.
This 12 months’s IPL begins with a match between defending champions Mumbai Indians and Royal Challengers Bangalore in Chennai on April 9 with the ultimate scheduled to be performed on May 30 in Ahmedabad.
