Matheesha Pathirana may have run out with a bagful of wickets to ensure Chennai Super Kings defended 206 without much sweat against Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede Stadium.
As much as Pathirana, CSK bowling coach Eric Simons credited Mumbai’s pace duo of Shardul Thakur and Tushar Deshpande for their outstanding bowling effort.
“The unsung heroes tonight were Tushar and Shardul. Shardul bowled one of the best overs I have ever seen. We talk about execution; you have got to look at the impact points in that over where he went for two runs.
“The whole game turns at that moment. At that stage they were looking at 12s-13s an over, the game’s very much in the balance. He bowls the over and it goes up at 14. The game turned there,” Simons said after the game at the Wankhede Stadium.
While Shardul conceded just two runs in the 14th over, Deshpande followed it up with one that gave away just three runs and picked a wicket to literally shut the door on Rohit Sharma and Co.
“Matheesha will get a lot of accolades and he deserves it because of the way he bowled and the breakthroughs he gave us. But those two gentlemen did extremely well for us to push the rate out of reach out of MI.”
Simons, however, didn’t reserve his praise for Pathirana, who returned to the park after missing the previous two games with an injury. “He is a very special talent as well, just the way he comes and does things. I was really pleased with his accuracy tonight, he was outstanding,” said Simons, who was India’s bowling coach at the 2011 World Cup.
“I said to him afterwards, the wickets are a bonus but his accuracy was really good. Sometimes you’ll bowl accurately but not get wickets. Tonight he was accurate and got wickets.”
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