Daredevils will ride home advantage, feels Quinton de Kock

New Delhi: Delhi Daredevils’ Quinton de Kock is hoping that the Indian Premier League Season Seven’s shift from the UAE to India would provide the team “the edge”. Delhi struggled to impress in their five matches in the UAE, but the South African wicket-keeper batsman said “home advantage” could turn things in their favour.

“The IPL returning to India will definitely give some edge to the local guys,” said de Kock, after the players spent close to three hours at the nets to get an idea of local conditions. “As a foreign player, this does feel like an away game for me but looking at the mental aspect, the local players as well as someone like Kevin Pietersen will feel more at home here,” the 21-year old said.

The South African sat out the team’s opening three games in the UAE, but was asked to open the batting along with Murali Vijay as Delhi looked to fine-tune their batting order. De Kock responded with knocks of 48 and 16 in those two matches. “We started off a little slowly in the tournament losing the first couple of games, but came back well and we are playing good cricket now.

“As for my batting, I don’t think I will change my gameplan in different tournaments. If there are some corrections required, I’ll do that but for me it’s important to keep it simple,” he said. Delhi take on Rajasthan in their first home game here on Saturday night and will need their batsmen to fire — an area that has let them down so far. De Kock, however, felt that was it was “about getting into the groove”.

The youngster said he was enjoying his time with the Daredevils and learning new things under skipper Pietersen. “KP is a really chilled out guy. I had never met or spoken to him before and people told me that he had a big ego but that’s absolutely not the case. He is very down to earth.”