A few days after he was denied strike on the last ball of the match against Punjab Kings, as his captain Sanju Samson chose to face the delivery instead, Rajasthan Royals (RR) all-rounder Chris Morris showed off his batting chops as he led RR to a fascinating three-wicket win over Delhi Capitals on Thursday night in Mumbai.
Rajasthan needed 27 runs off the last 12 deliveries with Morris and Jaydev Unadkat at the crease and the South African smashed four sixes during his 18-ball 36 to get the team past the finish line and help pick up their first points of the season.
While speaking to the commentators after the innings, one of the first questions Morris was asked about the previous match when he had run almost halfway down the pitch towards the batting end, only to be sent back by Samson who chose to retain strike for the last ball. TV replays captured Morris’ reaction of bemusement that were shared widely on social media, specially as Samson could not manage to hit the six off the last ball and instead lost his wicket, after being caught near the boundary line.
Speaking about the incident, Morris said he was going for the double and would have made the ‘sacrifice’ of getting out had he and Samson not been able to complete the second run.
“I was going to run back no matter what to sacrifice because Sanju was hitting it so sweetly. Sanju was hitting it like a dream, I wouldn’t have been too upset if he had hit the last ball for a six,” said Morris about the incident in Monday’s game.
Asked about his batting position in the RR line-up where he comes out at the eighth spot, Morris, who was bought for Rs 16.25 crore at the 2021 IPL mini-auction, said that he knows he is being paid to hit big.
“There are guys who get paid to bat and there are guys who get paid to slog, I know what I am. I am a slogger that swings everything I can, I play so much golf,” he added.
RR had earlier restricted DC to 147/8 in 20 overs and the right-handed batsman and right-arm bowler from South Africa said that he would have taken that target before the start of the match.
"If we had to chase 140-odd when we got here, we would have taken it, so happy to get over the line...it's quite nice to know that we can win a game from anywhere after being down in the dumps. That's T20 cricket," he added.
(With inputs from IANS)
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