Soon after his Man-of-the-Match effort in Mumbai Indians’ crucial win over Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League on Sunday, all-rounder Hardik Pandya said he has stopped practicing batting. Pandya notched up a 20-ball 35 not out in MI’s match-winning total of 181 at the Wankhede Stadium before capturing 2 for 19 to snatch the purple cap by becoming the leading wicket-taker with 14 scalps to his credit.<\/p>\n
“I am not doing anything (different). It is just that someday it comes off. I have stopped practising (batting). I am someone who thinks differently. I am actually just being positive. It’s all about one hit, to be honest. You score one six and all of a sudden the momentum shifts and everything changes,” Pandya said when asked about his batting.<\/p>\n
“Obviously if people bowl well I have (to) respect (them) and can’t do anything. No one can do anything. My game is something that I am positive (about) from my mind and it comes off,” the hard-hitting batsman added.<\/p>\n
“It is a good thing. It was not my effort. Koshish nahi thi (had not strived for it). But the cap is there if you take wickets and I am happy,” he remarked about wearing the purple cap.<\/p>\n
“The team is quite positive and we have to think that we are going to make it. As a team we believe that we can do this and we have done it in the past though it is a bit difficult to do it,” he said about MI’s back-to-back wins.<\/p>\n
Losing team’s captain Dinesh Karthik said that he had to change the opening pair as regular innings launcher Sunil Narine felt unwell.<\/p>\n
“He was not feeling well, that’s why he went out of the field in the 18th-19th over,” said Karthik.<\/p>\n
KKR started the run-chase with youngster Shubman Gill partnering Chris Lynn and the team slumped to 28 for two at the start of the fourth over.<\/p>\n
Karthik defended his move in not giving Andre Russell, who was brought on as the seventh bowler, his full quota of four overs in spite of taking a wicket each in his first two overs.<\/p>\n
“Yes, that’s true but we have a certain role for Russell in the team on what stage of the game he bowls. On this day he bowled well but on other days he goes for boundaries.<\/p>\n
“Over a period of days we have figured out how to get the best out of him,” said the wicketkeeper-batsman.<\/p>\n
Karthik praised Jasprit Bumrah for upsetting his plans in the 19th over of the run-chase with some good death bowling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Soon after his Man-of-the-Match effort in Mumbai Indians’ crucial win over Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League on Sunday, all-rounder Hardik Pandya said he has stopped practicing batting. Pandya notched up a 20-ball 35 not out in MI’s match-winning total of 181 at the Wankhede Stadium before capturing 2 for 19 to snatch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30403,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30402"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30404,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30402\/revisions\/30404"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}