“I could not have asked for a better start,” a soft spoken Alzarri Joseph said after claiming the best bowling figures in IPL history on his tournament debut. Young Windies pacer ended with sensational figures of six for 12 in 3.4 overs, bettering the effort of Pakistan pacer Sohail Tanvir, who had taken six for 14 in the inaugural IPL edition in 2008, on Saturday night.
His rare feat helped Mumbai Indians register a 40-run win over Sunrisers Hyderabad in a low-scoring game. “It is a dream. I could not have asked for a better start. I just backed my plans and it worked. My plan was to keep it simple and back myself,” said Joseph at the post match presentation. Joseph’s first over in IPL was a wicket maiden in which he removed the dangerous David Warner. “I know we had a game to win and I was focused on that. The boys are playing well and putting in a lot of hard work,” said the 20-year-old when asked why he did not celebrate Warner’s wicket.
Winning skipper Rohit Sharma, said, “Very pleased. Winning the game is obviously a great result. I thought 136 wasn’t a great batting effort, but we bowled in the right areas, kept them guessing all the time and held our nerves. We were in the game till the last ball which is what we spoke of. It was a sensational bowling effort from Alzarri, to bowl like this in first game. He’s come in on a lot of confidence from the CPL and he’s carrying it here. We didn’t bat well to start with, kept losing wickets and we knew after a few overs that it wasn’t a 170-180 pitch.”
“The pitch was under covers for a day, it was raining as well and the wicket was a bit sticky. So we knew that 140 would be a good score to defend because we’ve got the quality in our bowling and we back them to defend whatever we get. The bulk of the runs were scored by the top-order, but it’s not that their middle order wasn’t good and we wanted to exploit that. We knew that once we got an early wicket we were in the game and with the spin and the seamers we have, we knew we could knock them out in the middle.”
“We want to win as many games as possible at the start because we know how hectic it gets in the end. A few of the guys leaving for the World Cup doesn’t help either. To start the tournament is important and the last two games shows the quality we have in our squad. Again, we needed characters to step up – Pollard came in and played that knock towards the end which was very crucial in contributing to the total. All the bowlers then stepped in and contributed with Alzarri.”
Bhuvneshwar Kumar, the losing captain, said, “I think it started off when we dropped Pollard, he scored 25-30 runs – it is a huge margin. It could have been an easy chase if we would have applied ourselves. When you drop catches it is never easy. There is less margin for error (when you are bowling) but you need to grab your chances to restrict any team to under 120.”
“It (captaincy) is difficult but you have experienced players around, not a tough job. First three matches we got good opening partnerships but we never got a chance to test our middle order. Today when we did we did not apply ourselves. We will see what went wrong before going into the next match. It was not a normal flat wicket that we get in Hyderabad but it was not a tough chase.”
| Best bowling figures on IPL debut |
| 6/12 A JOSEPH v SRH, Hyderabad, 2019 |
| 5/17 A Tye GL v RPS Rajkot 2017 |
| 4/11 Shoaib Akhtar KKR v DD Kolkata 2008 |
| 4/24 S Jakati CSK v DD Jo’burg 2009 |