JOIN USHaving booked their place in the semifinal, Karnataka are the team to beat this season. R Vinay Kumar is a happy man but with the main job still not done, the Karnataka skipper asserted that there are still areas his team can improve.
"There are many things we need to improve on. While bowling we shouldn't give too many boundary balls and it's a kind of worry for me. When we bowl in partnerships, both the bowlers should bowl well and shouldn't give away too many runs. Our plan has worked partly. Many times, when one bowler is doing a good job the other bowler is giving away runs. I think we need to work on that and definitely in the coming games we will make sure we are well prepared in that aspect," he noted.
Vinay was delighted with his side's comprehensive victory over Mumbai. "They (Mumbai) are a good side. Knowing them, once we are on top of them, we made sure we stayed there. We didn't allow them to come back in the game. We batted like that. In the second innings, we thought they might come hard at us. But when we saw their approach we thought we shouldn't give too many runs and just concentrated on bowling in the right areas," he explained.
Mumbai, runners-up in the last edition, never played to their potential this year. Skipper Aditya Tare was a dejected man. "Every defeat hurts. It is something that stays with you forever. We lost the last time we played against them and the manner of defeat was quite similar. We missed senior players. Barring Dhawal (Kulkarni), four of our bowlers did not have even ten games put together. You need experience in big games. But even if you do not have that you need to come out and play your best game which we failed to do," he said.
The skipper didn't shy away from taking the blame for a poor batting show throughout the season. "Mine and Surya's (Suryakumar Yadav) form was the main issue. (Siddesh) Lad did his part but if you want to blame the batsmen, then it has to be Surya and me," he said.