Mumbai Indians stand-in skipper Suryakumar Yadav on Saturday lauded Sameer Rizvi’s brilliant batting while admitting that his team was few runs short of a par-score on a decent Kotla wicket.
“I think it was a decent wicket. We expected it to be a little on the slower side, but still from batting point of view we were a little short — 15-20 runs, but I don’t want to take any credit away from the bowlers and also their batters batted really well in the second innings,’ he said at the post-match presentation ceremony.
Asked about Sameer Rizvi, who slammed 90 off 51 balls coming as an impact substitute, Suryakumar said: “Absolutely, I mean at 7 for 2 someone coming in like that and batting like the way he batted, I think a lot of credit goes to him. He never let us come into the game. We tried our best to follow all the things what was there in the bowling department, but we couldn’t come back,” the stand-in captain said.
He said the pitch played true and it was the same both sides.
“I think it was quite similar. It didn’t change too much, but the way they batted, I think they batted very beautifully. They understood the conditions really well in the second innings and batted beautifully. So it was a tough pill to taste what might have been a good score.
“I mean when you’re batting first, there’s nothing like thinking about the score. You just keep batting, understand the stats, what’s good, what has been good here, but we felt 180-185 was a good score.
“We felt short by 15-20 runs. I think me and Naman, we both got out at the wrong time, otherwise we would have at least got above par. I mean absolutely, see, there’ll be days like this when you try and it won’t work, but we will go back to drawing board, work hard and come back in the next few days,” he said.
Player-of-the-match Sameer Rizvi was delighted with his back-to-back match winning performances coming in as an impact player.
“I’ve worked a lot. I’ve worked on my weaknesses. I wasn’t as good against fast bowlers. I try to play according to the situation. I took time, got set and then played my shots.
“I tried to watch the ball as long as possible. If you score runs here, you get a lot of confidence and opportunities for us youngsters,” he said.
