Didn’t play to our potential till now: Rohit
ABU DHABI: Mumbai Indians skipper Rohit Sharma agreed that his team didn’t play to their potential in the first three games on resumption while his Punjab Kings opposite number KL Rahul had no hesitation in admitting that his team is not handling pressure situations well enough.
MI beat Punjab Kings by six wickets after three back-to-back defeats and are now back in playoff contention with 10 points from 11 games.
“We do agree that we didn’t play to our potential, but it’s a long tournament and we need to stick to our plans and reading the situations is very important and we can take a lot of confidence from that. It is important not to lose the guard,” Rohit said at the post-match presentation ceremony.
He was all praise for Hardik Pandya, who finally returned to form with an unbeaten 30-ball 40 runs. “The way he (Hardik) understood the situation was very crucial from a team’s perspective. It’s important for him to spend the time in the middle as he’s coming back from a injury.”
Rahul, on his part, seemed disappointed when asked about whether his young team is unable to cope up with pressure situations. “It is what it is, we haven’t been able to handle the pressure.
We’ll learn more if we play more together as a team,” Rahul said.
“We need to be positive. We have three games, so we need to take one game at a time. We need to go out there and enjoy ourselves. All our games in the UAE have gone down to the wire, hopefully we can build on that.”
He also accepted that 135 was not a defendable target on this track. “It was a great fight, but 135 was not enough on this pitch. We should have got about 170. The boys showed a lot of fight with the ball, we have done that two games in a row. The next three games will be interesting for us as the table looks interesting,” Rahul said.
Rohit said that it was a tough call to drop someone like Ishan Kishan but the team will back him as he tries to get back to form. “It’s a tough call (on dropping Ishan Kishan). Saurabh (Tiwary) has played the perfect
role today and he’s done well to nudge around in the middle overs. We are going to back him (Ishan Kishan) as he’s a very important player for us.” Brief scores: Punjab Kings
135/6 in 20 overs (A Markram 42; K Pollard 2/8, J Bumrah 2/24) lost to Mumbai Indians 137/4 in 19 overs (S Tiwary 45, H Pandya 40*; R Bishnoi 2/25) by 6 wickets.
Iyer on a high
Kolkata Knight Riders’ (KKR) Venkatesh Iyer has said that he wants to show the world that he can be a very good all-rounder and can fulfill roles as both batter and bowler.
Nitish Rana‘s unbeaten knock of 36 runs as KKR chased down a target of 128 with three wickets in hand to defeat Delhi Capitals in the 19th over. KKR now have 10 points and is positioned at the fourth spot.
“I am an all-rounder and I want to tell the world that I can do roles as both batsman and bowler. When skipper Eoin Morgan handed me the ball, I was just focusing on the first six balls. Obviously, I had the thought of bowling three or four overs, but initially, I just focused on bowling the six balls perfectly,” Iyer told Rana in a video posted on iplt20.com.
Earlier, Lockie Ferguson, Sunil Narine, and Venkatesh Iyer scalped two wickets as Delhi Capitals was restricted to 127/9 in the allotted overs. Brief scores: Capitals
127/9 in 20 overs (S Smith 39, R Pant 39; L Ferguson 2/10, S
Narine 2/18) lost to Kolkata
Knight Riders 130/7 in 18.2 overs (N Rana 36*; A Khan 3/13) by 3 wickets.
IPL media rights soon
BCCI announced the tender of IPL media rights for 2023-2027 after the Governing Council meeting on Tuesday. “The IPL media rights tender for the cycle 2023-2027 will be released immediately after the appointment of two new IPL teams which is scheduled to be announced on October 25,” a BCCI release said. Currently, Star India have the IPL broadcast and digitals rights for 2018-2022, having won it with a consolidated bid of ₹16,347.5 crore. Also, in a first, the last two league matches will be played concurrently. SRH vs MI and RCB vs Delhi Capitals on October 8 will be played simultaneously at 7.30pm IST.