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Heaping praise on the Kolkata Knight Riders’ bowling unit after a comfortable six-wicket win over Delhi Daredevils, skipper Gautam Gambhir said he was relieved to make a winning start in the IPL — something that had not happened in the last two years.
“We don’t want to be in a situation where we would be desperate for points. I am pretty comfortable with the performance,” Gambhir said in the post-match conference yesterday.
“After two years, we have points on the board straightway. It’s very nice to start on a winning note. We have not done that since I took over as KKR Captain,” a relieved Gambhir added.
Gambhir said Brett Lee (2/40) brought the IPL 6 alive with his first-ball dismissal, while man-of-the-match Sunil Narine (4/13), Rajat Bhatia (2/23) and Laxmipathy Balaji (1/20) contributed well in bundling DD out for 128.
“It was a dream start. Never thought we would get such a start. It just set the tone. It woke up everyone,” the skipper said about Lee’s first-ball dismissal.
A Captain’s moves won’t click “if he doesn’t have quality players in the side”.
“It is the players who execute the plans... I have always maintained that there are quality players in the KKR side and they can pull off a win from any given situation. I credit the entire team for the win, especially the bowling department,” he said.
Gambhir said he always wanted to keep Narine for the last three overs.
“The most important thing is to finish off well. It was very important to keep Sunil for the last three overs and get the momentum in our favour. Restricting the opposition to 128 was a fantastic effort. Sunil was outstanding, so was Balaji and Lee”.
He also credited Bhatia, who bowled an economical (5.75) spell and took two wickets.
“Rajat is normally very underrated. But his four overs were really crucial. But they had quality batsmen in Mahela (Jayawardene) and (David) Warner who still got them to a decent total,” he added.
Gambhir was circumspect as he put DD up front after winning the toss.
“We did not know how the wicket will behave. There was a bit of grass on this wicket. Sometimes you become anxious make a wrong judgement. Once we know the target, it becomes easy,” he admitted.
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