Rajasthan Royals (RR) on Sunday defeated the Mumbai Indians (MI) in a nail biting encounter by 3 wickets with just 2 balls to spare in their Indian Premier League (IPL) Match at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium, Jaipur. The match went down to the wire as Krishnappa Gowtham took the Royals over the line scoring an unbeaten 33 off just 11 deliveries. With 10 runs required off the last over, Pandya grabbed the wicket of Archer in the very first delivery to pile on the pressure on the Royals’ batsmen, but Gowtham was having none of that as he coolly swatted the next delivery for a four before ending the nights’ proceedings with a massive six.
“It is good to be back on the park after missing the first few games. We just wanted to restrict them after it looked like they would get to 190. Stokesy had a chat with us at the half way stage and told us we needed to restrict them.
That’s exactly what we did and then chased it down (swag smile). It was a bit nervy coming to the end, when we needed 40 in 20, but with the talent we had in the line up we knew it would be easy. The heartbeat hasn’t come down as yet; still pumping from that win.”
“I still can’t believe what happened. I just want to give credit to my bowlers for the way they came back after 14 overs because it looked like they’d get to 180-190. But in the end KG’s knock was unbelievable. In the time-out the plan was to take it deep.
We knew we had hitters like Jos, Ben, Klassen and Jofra who could hit the ball a long way. We knew that we were always just two big shots away. Rahul batted really well at the top of the order last year, and that is the combination we wanted to go in with.
It looks like we’ll still continue with that. We are happy to see Jofra back, his spell and the way Jaydev and Dhawal bowled in the middle overs was the key.
Jofra can bowl at 140+ and his pace and accuracy was amazing. He’s always thinking about wickets and when you do that your mindset is always positive which is the way to go about.”
“On top of the world. I had a decent first class year. The captain asked me to believe and that’s what I did. It worked. You just need a good hit with 6 needed off 3 balls. That’s what I was thinking when I denied the single.”
The skipper of Mumbai Indians, Rohit Sharma said:
“Not easy, especially towards the end. Have to give credit to them; they played well. Not easy to score 10 an over given how the wicket was playing. I think (not finishing well with the bat) hurt us. We didn’t capitalize on the start.
Second or third time we have done that. I hope we can learn from the mistakes. Wasn’t easy (towards the end of the innings), because they were taking the pace off but we needed to be smarter.
It is not easy, which is probably the reason why I haven’t been critical about my bowling unit. 20 runs more would have made the difference.”