NEW DELHI: Mumbai Indians skipper Hardik Pandya credited his bowlers for effectively using variations and executing plans smartly on a sluggish wicket, as his side secured a four-wicket win over Sunrisers Hyderabad in their IPL match at the Wankhede Stadium on Thursday.
MI restricted SRH to 162 for five and chased down the target with 11 balls to spare, finishing at 166 for six in 18.1 overs.
“I think the way we bowled today was very smart and spot on. We stuck to simple basic plans. Certain balls were not easy to hit. Credit to the bowlers that we made them hit some good shots. We were kind of squeezing them,” Pandya said at the post-match presentation.
The MI captain noted that the pitch offered some early assistance, which the bowlers capitalised on.
“If you look at it, had a nice green grass look to it. The first couple of overs that Deepak (Chahar) bowled, couple of balls got stuck in. We decided to use change of pace balls. As soon as we figured out, we trying to mixing it up.
“We executed the yorkers very smartly well.”
Will Jacks was the standout performer for Mumbai, returning impressive figures of 2/14 before scoring a brisk 36 off 26 balls to help his team notch their second straight win of the season.
“That is the beauty of Jacks. He can be a gun fielder. Bowl those gun overs. Today it came off for him.
“When we needed 42 off 42, it was tricky. We wanted to take our time.”
Meanwhile, SRH captain Pat Cummins admitted his side fell short of a competitive total on a challenging surface.
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“It wasn’t the easiest wicket. Few runs short, we would have liked a couple more with the bat. Tricky wicket, when you come here you expect it to be really fluent and fast, just wasn’t that,” he said.
MI bowlers were clinical as they kept the SRH batting line-up in check, not allowing them to break free at any stage of the innings.
“They bowled really well, shut down a lot of our hitting areas. I thought we had all our bases covered, with 160 you feel like you are a little bit short,” Cummins added.
“We gave it a good crack with the ball. We thought we needed wickets, we had plenty of death bowling, we knew the impact player would bowl 1-2 overs that’s why we went with Rahul.”
For SRH, it was their fifth loss in seven games this season.
“You have got to play well away from home to make the final, unfortunately it hasn’t clicked so far this season, we have a short break and we go again,” he said.
“Every game we talk about assessing, the boys did well to get through the powerplay and there wasn’t reckless hitting, next game is at home and we know that venue pretty well.”
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