Mumbai : An all-round bowling performance led by Harshal Patel (3/35) helped Royal Challengers Bangalore beat Chennai Super Kings by 13 runs in Match 49. With the win, Bangalore grabbed the fourth spot on the points table.
Harshal Patel, Man of the Match, said, ‘ I think in the first over, the slower balls I tried to bowl it into the wicket but it kind of floated onto the bat. I have been trying to improve my sequencing. I am glad I was able to come back. To both the left-handers, I was asked to bowl wide outside off so that they hit to the larger side of the ground.
One thing is need to be aware of the conditions and then what the batter is trying to do. Then you should know what kind of balls you can execute. Till the time you have clarity when you are at the top of the mark, you should be fine. When people are waiting for the slower balls, my hard length balls and my yorkers are released. Till now this season I have not been able to bowl those but hopefully will do it in the business end of the tournament.’
Faf du Plessis, Winning captain, said, ‘ We definitely needed that. We put up a decent total. We are moving in the right direction. We have been very good in the bowling department. I thought 165 was a par score on that and anything above that was a bonus. I thought the Powerplay was a good time to score. The fielding was amazing.
Some great catching and good bowling indeed. We are very lucky to have experienced guys. Very good to have me lean on the senior players. Just keep improving in the batting department. We want one of the top four to bat through. Need to keep playing the positive brand of cricket. Once you get an opportunity to think of the run rate in a match, you will be able to put on the gas and go for it.’
MS Dhoni, losing captain, said, ‘We did well to restrict them to 170-odd runs. I felt in the later half it (the surface) could be better and we had to get off to a good start, everything was up to the mark and what let us down was the batsmanship. When you are chasing you know what is required and at times you have to curb your instinct and see what really the situation is demanding rather than playing your shots. The shot selection could have been better towards the end. We had a good start and had wickets in hand, the surface kept getting better but we lost wickets at regular intervals.
We can look back at some of the shots, if we take care of those things.. chasing is about calculations and batting first is more about instinct. Ultimately as a batter or bowler you are in the middle and you have to decide, I don’t think that was a problem today. We need to keep looking about what went wrong, it is easy to get distracted with how many points you have, it is the mistakes and it is the process that matters rather than where you are positioned in the points table.
Glenn Maxwell said, ‘ Over the moon. Really good bowling effort. We felt there is enough tackiness in the wicket that we were able to exploit with the spinners and for the pacers to hold their nerve against some powerful death hitters to finish off the game was good. The way Moeen and Jadeja bowled, it showed the finger spinners were getting a bit of hold and grip.
For me it was about bowling within the stumps and changing the seam angle to try and get that variable spin. It helps that they had two lefties and I was able to spin the ball away. Just gives us another option with the ball at the back end as well. Shuts down one side of the ground [on bowling from round the wicket to the right-hander].
The Robin one if I do that from over the stumps, would have been more of a pull shot, which is his strength. To cramp him and not give room was key I guess. Hopefully we can ride this momentum and winning momentum is hard to stop. Our bowling group are starting to gel and I feel we are going in the right direction.
Hopefully we haven’t left it too late and we can peak right towards the finals and find a way into the top four and do some damage in the finals.’