Mayank: ‘The thought process was to play good strokes’
Kings XI Punjab batsman Mayank Agarwal, who earned the Man of the Match award for a breezy 21-ball 43, executed all his shots within the comfort zone.
Published : Mar 30, 2019 22:20 IST
It was as clinical a batting performance as possible in T20 and Mayank Agarwal had no qualms in admitting that Kings XI Punjab would go into the next game with a lot more confidence in its batting unit after the eight-wicket win against three-time champion Mumbai Indians with eight balls to spare.
With hardly a bad shot, Agarwal (43 off 21) earned the Man of the Match award for his sublime strokes in the middle without compromising on scoring. “The thought process was to play good cricketing strokes. The talk in the dressing room is that, as a batting unit, you need to play good strokes, be calm, stay within your strike zone, play in the areas you are good at and go about it. As a batting unit we were very clinical, we didn’t play bad shots and got the job done,” he said.
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Mumbai’s bowling coach Shane Bond was equally honest in his own team’s dismal outing. “We were reasonably confident that 177 was a winning score, if we bowled better than we did today...The pitch was also better, it was bowler friendly, but we bowled too wide and too full and K.L. Rahul (71 not out off 57 balls) took his time. We knew they would try to play out (Jasprit) Bumrah and (Lasith) Malinga and we tried to delay spin as late as we could. Krunal bowled perfectly but Mayank dragged us back in the middle and took them home,” he said.
Bond was clearly disappointed with his bowlers. “I don’t mind if a great player plays great shots and wins but that wasn’t the case today. There is no excuse...we got around 70 in the last nine overs. The ground is big but it had gaps and we did use them in the first ten overs. I think Chris Gayle getting out was not the turning point, if we bowled as we should have bowled we could have won the game,” he admitted.