Pollard credits ‘burning desire to play for India’ behind Suryakumar’s success

After bowlers pulled things back by restricting RCB to 164/6 despite a good start, Suryakumar Yadav, who was ignored for the Australian Tour, scored an unbeaten 79 from 43 balls to steer his team home.

Hyderabad: Mumbai Indians became the first team to collect 16 points in the ongoing Indian Premier League and set one foot in the playoffs after defeating Royal Challengers Bangalore by five wickets on Wednesday. After bowlers pulled things back by restricting RCB to 164/6 despite a good start, Suryakumar Yadav, who was ignored for the Australian Tour, scored an unbeaten 79 from 43 balls to steer his team home.

Speaking after the match, MI captain Kieron Pollard hailed Suryakumar’s knock and said his burning desire to play for India made him strong. “It (his innings) is very valuable. We always spoke about one of the top four batters, bat all the way through if you are chasing, go all the way through and win the game for us. He has done that more often than not. He wants to do well and today again he showed his class on how well he can bat…and deep down inside the burning desire to don that blue, but again he continues to show consistency, which is all that he can do as an individual,” he said.

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Pollard lauded his bowlers to pull things back as RCB looked on course for a big total. “At one point, 190-200 looked on the card. But we came back strongly and restricting them to 165 was great. Bumrah bowled well and Krunal Pandya bowled four economical overs. It was great to come back. They had a good powerplay. We hung in there. We knew one wicket and our spinners can come back strongly. I came on at one point and got AB luckily. Had it gone for a six, the momentum would have shifted in their favour. A bit of luck on our side and the bowlers did well,” he added.

When asked about particular plans against Virat Kohli as they kept him silent in the last few matches, he said, “We go back, we sit and plan. Hopefully whatever we plan we execute on the field. But he is a class player. He only needs one or two balls to get into momentum.”

Meanwhile, RCB coach Simon Katich said they were outplayed by MI. “We came here today to try to regroup. Whenever we lost matches, we came back strongly. But today Mumbai outplayed us. The positives today were two youngsters (Josh) Philippe and (Devdutt) Padikkal doing well. We got a good start but lost four wickets in 13 balls at the back end when we were on course for 180 runs. 165 were not good enough.”

Siraj, who was impressive with the new ball, could not open the bowling. “It was about conditions and match ups. With two left-handers at the top order we got (Washington) Sundar into attack. And with (Chris) Morris and (Dale) Styen in the line-up, Siraj could not bowl,” he added.

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