A pleased Mumbai Indians skipper Rohit Sharma lauded his team for an “excellent fightback” against Kolkata Knight Riders, saying that one doesn’t get to see these kind of tantalisingly close games.
Mumbai Indians came back strongly in the last 10 overs of the match to defend a meagre total of 152 against KKR which managed only 20 runs in the last five overs.
“It was an excellent fightback by each one of them. You don’t see a game like this often. We will take lots of confidence from this game as we move forward,” Rohit said at the post-match presentation ceremony.
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The MI skipper called the win a complete team effort on a difficult track.
“KKR batted brilliantly in the Powerplay. Rahul (Chahar) came and got us crucial wickets in the middle. Krunal (Pandya) bowling those overs at the end was vital as well.
“It was a complete team effort and credit to all the bowlers. As batters, you need to carry on. The trend in Chennai is you can’t hit from ball one. You have to plan before you go into bat. We were 15-20 runs short,” he said.
Losing captain Eoin Morgan was unhappy that his team didn’t play “bold cricket” in the final 10 overs.
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“Yes, disappointing (to lose). We played some really good cricket for most parts of the game, we looked comfortable in the chase, but they are a strong team, came back well and sad that it didn’t work out for us,” he said.
“We made a few mistakes and will need to sort that out. A perfect game needs to be bold, it came to cost us in the last 10 overs of the game,” said Morgan.