Mumbai Indians (MI) bowling coach Shane Bond said that they were very clear with their bowling plans for the top three of Rajasthan Royals (RR) batting order and was pleased to see them come off, after his side’s win against RR in the Indian Premier League (IPL), on Tuesday.
“We know how dangerous Jos Buttler is and was again, got runs against us tonight again. We bowled very straight to him, and I thought in the powerplay we were excellent. With Steven (Smith), we wanted to make him go across the line, block his all main scoring zones and with Sanju, we wanted to use the short ball.”
Trent Boult started the wickets procession with getting Yashasvi Jaiswal in the first over. Jasprit Bumrah took the new ball for the first time in this IPL and got Steve Smith knicking the incoming delivery into the hands of the keeper after going for a hoick across on the leg side.
Asked about giving Bumrah the new ball and not James Pattinson (as usual), Bond said that Bumrah genuinely wanted to take the new ball and as a side, they want to keep throwing different curveballs to the opposition.
“We knew that Rajasthan’s key players are at the top of the order, we wanted to give him the opportunity to get out there, take the new ball and try [to] get some wickets for us and today he was sensational.”
After getting Steve Smith in the powerplay, Bumrah took three more wickets at the back-end of the Royals’ innings, to end up with figures of 4-20.
Bond also couldn’t stop raving about Suryakumar Yadav’s innings. Asked about his shot-making, Bond said that some of his shots (a lap/scoop off a full-toss wide outside the off-stump over fine-leg) were extraordinary. He said that Surya has been frustrated that he was hitting the ball well but wasn’t able to go for long and was really happy to see his talent on full display on Tuesday.
Suryakumar Yadav after getting starts in the first five matches had scores of 17, 47, 0, 10 and 27 to show. He made it count on Tuesday after Mumbai were three down in the 10th over and went on to play an unbeaten innings of 79 runs off just 47 balls with some out-of-the-box shot-making.
“I look at our team and I think we’re as good as any team in the competition. We’ve got firepower across the board. If we turn up and play the style we want to, if we execute the stuff we want to with the ball, then we are very very tough team to beat.”Shane Bond, Bowling Coach, MI
Jasprit Bumrah got the best figures of this tournament till now yesterday with 4-20. Asked about his preparation before the tournament, Bond said that it is a challenge for all the bowlers after coming from such a huge break and it generally takes 3-4 games to come back into the groove.
“Jasprit by his own admission has done some really brilliant stuff and then one or two overs he hasn’t been that accurate that he'd want to be. So, we had a discussion pre-game, he really wanted to back his yorker and go back to his strengths.”
Mumbai Indians have now won three games in a row and sit at the top of the Points table. They will now face the Delhi Capitals on Sunday, 11 October, in Abu Dhabi.
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