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Mumbai, April 25 (IANS)
Mumbai Indians skipper Rohit Sharma on Saturday praised his team for putting up a much improved performance, both with the bat and ball, to outclass Sunrisers Hyderabad by 20 runs in an Indian Premier League (IPL) encounter.
Opting to bat first, home side Mumbai Indians posted 157/8 in 20 overs.
Later, Mumbai's Lasith Malinga with match-winning figures of 4-1-23-4, well supported by his teammates Mitchell McClenaghan and Jagadeesha Suchith restricted Hyderabad to 137/8 in 20 overs.
“I am very satisfied to be honest with the overall performance. We were looking for a good start and got that. We lost couple of wickets in the middle overs, but we never gave up. Later on we came up with a superb bowling performance,” Rohit said at the post-match press conference here.
“I felt that to come and defend 157 was never easy on that wicket. We knew their strengths and weakness. We tried to get rid of their strong openers as quickly as possible. We were successful in getting both David Warner and then Shikhar Dhawan,” the skipper said.
“This will help us stay in the hunt”
With this victory, the 2013 IPL champions registered their second win of the season from seven games. Rohit said the victory will bring confidence to the team and also help them stay in the hunt.
“This win obviously helps us stay in the hunt as we don't know what is going to happen in the end. We are not looking that far ahead. We just wanted to take every game as it comes. At the end of the day we have to bowl well, bat well and field well,” he said.
“So after seven games now, we know what we have done and what needs to be done. We have nice four-five days ahead of the next match (against Rajasthan Royals on May 1). We will train hard again and see what we can come up with Rajasthan,” the 27-year-old said.
Rohit praises Malinga
The captain of the Mumbai Indians reserved special praise for star pacer Lasith Malinga. He said that he never lost confidence in the Sri Lankan and that today was the perfect platform for the fast bowler to shine.
“Earlier, I had said about Malinga, he is just one game away from a magical performance. He is such an experienced bowler. He has done it over and over again for Sri Lanka and Mumbai over the years,” Rohit said at the post-match press conference.
“There is a lot of expectations from Malinga. He keeps it very simple. He comes and bowls those yorkers. Whatever he does the best he keeps doing that. I even had a lot of confidence even when he was not bowling well. This is the confidence he was looking for. Today (Saturday) was the perfect platform for him.
“The fast bowlers, Malinga, McClenaghan, Vinay Kumar and spinners Suchith, Harbhajan Singh bowled really well according to the plan. It was pleasing to see the way they bowled. It made things easy for me as a skipper,” he concluded.
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