One of the big factors which helped Delhi Daredevils record a convincing, seven-wicket win over Sunrisers Hyderabad here on Thursday is solving the mystery of Bangladeshi left-armer Mustafizur Rahman.
For someone who is one of the key members of the formidable Sunrisers bowling attack, he went wicketless for only the third time in 11 games this season and, more importantly, proved expensive (4-0-39-0).
The reason? “Mustafizur is an unbelievable bowler at the age of 20. It’s scary to see. So for a guy who’s doing so well in the IPL, his first IPL especially, we’ve got to pick up the box to try and combat what he’s putting down,” man-of-the-match Chris Morris said after the match.
The all-rounder revealed that a lot of planning had gone behind tackling Mustafizur, and that they were happy that the game-plan worked. “We saw the videos of how Steve Smith and R. Ashwin of Pune Supergiants handled him in the previous games. There was a way out,” he added.
Showering praise on the young Rishabh Pant, who treated Mustafizur with ease, hitting him for two huge sixes, Morris felt he was an unbelievable talent. “He just comes in and ‘see ball, hit ball’. It doesn’t matter who the bowler is. It’s unbelievable to watch. I thought he played outstandingly. We’ll take a lot of confidence out of this win set up by the way de Kock batted at the top,” he said.
Morris, making a critical analysis of his team’s emphatic win, felt that the key was the way they played the shots. “There were genuine cricket shots. Quiney [de Kock] showed us how to play a ball that’s swinging. You’ve got experience in [Ashish] Nehra and you’ve got Bhuvi [Bhuvneshwar Kumar], who swings it both ways. So, I thought it was excellent from the way they played today [Thursday]. Hats off to Pant and Sanju [Samson], for their outstanding knocks,” he said.
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