Having led his team to 7 wins in 9 outings in the DLF Indian Premier League (IPL), Shane Warne is sitting pretty as the most successful captain-coach in the IPL. His brilliant strategies have seen the Rajasthan Royals go from a lacklustre team at the start of the tournament to one of the first teams to secure a Semi Final berth.
In the post match press conference after the match against the Daredevils, Warne appreciated his wards' efforts and spoke about how the strategies devised by his team have come off.
He started off by lauding Shane Watson's efforts saying that his match-winning innings of 74 (off 40 balls) was what turned the tide in favour of his team. He termed the Aussie allrounder's innings as "the most valuable innings of the tournament".
He also said given the quality of batsman in the Daredevils' ranks, restricting them to 157 was a good effort by his boys and conceded 170 was par for the course on that wicket.
Warne took full responsibility for letting the Daredevils off the hook; the 19th over of the Daredevils' innings, bowled by Warne, cost him 27. Farveez Maharoof smashed the blonde leggie for four sixes to help Delhi past the 150-run mark.
Terming that over as a ‘small mishap', the Royals' skipper quickly clarified that all his other ploys worked perfectly.
Talking about the strategies he had in place to contain Sehwag and Gambhir, Warne said that the Rajasthan Royals had studied the two Delhi openers closely and had devised a strategy to contain the flamboyant openers. He said, " We know Sehwag and Gambhir like to hit square, they like the pace so we thought if we have Dimitri Mascarenhas bowl medium pacers up front, it would be difficult for them as they like the ball coming on to the bat faster."
He added that Delhi played well, but was proud that his side fought back strongly to avenge the defeat that was handed to them by Sehwag and co. when the two sides met in their opening encounter of the IPL.
"Look, all in all I was very happy," concluded the Australian spin wizard, content with seeing his team sitting pretty at the top of the points table.
The Royals next face the last-placed Royal Challengers Bangalore after a 5-day break.
comments: 0
Post a Comment