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IPL 13: Just wanted to capitalise on first three-four overs during run chase, says Rohit Sharma
After winning the 13th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), Mumbai Indians skipper Rohit Sharma said that the side wanted to capitalise the first three-four overs to the maximum during their run chase in the finals against Delhi Capitals.
Dubai: After winning the 13th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), Mumbai Indians skipper Rohit Sharma said that the side wanted to capitalise the first three-four overs to the maximum during their run chase in the finals against Delhi Capitals.
Mumbai Indians defeated Delhi Capitals by five wickets and eight balls to spare in the finals of the tournament on Tuesday at the Dubai International Stadium.
This is the fifth IPL title win for the Rohit Sharma-led side. The franchise had earlier won the tournament in 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2019.
Rohit Sharma played a knock of 68 runs for Mumbai in the finals as the side was chasing a target of 157 while for Delhi, Anrich Nortje scalped two wickets.
"There was no strategy as such, I just wanted to be positive in my thought process, Ashwin is their key bowler and I just wanted to put pressure on their key bowler, he is a quality bowler, it came off, when you are chasing a target like that, you want to get off to a good start, you want to make sure there is no pressure at the back end, we just wanted to capitalise on the first three-four overs," said Rohit during the post-match press conference.
Earlier, Delhi Capitals had won the toss in the finals against Mumbai Indians and the Shreyas Iyer-led side had decided to bat first. Shreyas Iyer and Rishabh Pant played knocks of 65 and 56 respectively as Delhi Capitals posted a total of 156/7 in the allotted twenty overs.
For Mumbai Indians, Trent Boult took three wickets (Marcus Stoinis, Ajinkya Rahane, and Shimron Hetmyer) while Nathan Coulter-Nile dismissed two batsmen -- Rishabh Pant and Axar Patel.
"We knew Stoinis and Dhawan are Delhi's key batters, so we wanted to bowl our key bowlers at them, getting early wickets was the key, we wanted to take early wickets, when you have the best new bowler in your squad, why not go with that? Boult has been fantastic for us this season and so has Bumrah. They are the ones who kept us in the game most of the game throughout. Pattinson, Coulter-Nile, Chahar, and Krunal Pandya also did their job," said Sharma.
"When you are playing a big game like that, you cannot think about the results, you just want to follow the process and keep doing the right things on the ground. We got a wicket on the first ball and we got a couple more after that. We just wanted to keep the pressure, the execution was perfect from all the bowlers," he added.
In IPL 2020, Ishan Kishan and Suryakumar Yadav scored 516 and 480 runs respectively for Mumbai Indians. Talking about the performance of these two batters, Rohit said: "Look, Surya and Kishan have been superb with the bat, we saw the results on the ground, they played with a lot of freedom, they are very talented in shot-making, it was important for us to give them freedom, the owners also gave them real confidence to go out there and express themselves."
"I mean firstly we are very happy to be on the ground, everyone did a good job to get the tournament going, the safety of players was taken care of. I would like to congratulate all the franchises as well regarding no hiccups in terms of the bio-bubble created, all franchises were very disciplined in order to make IPL this year a huge success. I hope this championship we have won is something that brings joy to people back home," he concluded. (ANI)