We trust our skills, says James Hopes

In the post-match briefing after Punjab outsmarted Mumbai Indians in the Qualifier 2 of IPL at Ahmedabad on Sunday night, Hope said Shreyas did that a couple of times in this edition and it was a classy knock.

Hyderabad: Punjab Kings bowling coach James Hopes said that Shreyas Iyer batted beautifully and just flicked the switch after he scored 20 off 24 at one stage and he is a match winner.

In the post-match briefing after Punjab outsmarted Mumbai Indians in the Qualifier 2 of IPL at Ahmedabad on Sunday night, Hope said Shreyas did that a couple of times in this edition and it was a classy knock.

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“Shreyas is a sensational captain and a sensational player. I think the big thing with that is like the game up in Chandigarh (which Punjab lost to Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the Qualifier is don’t try to find a reason for it. Don’t look at oh well why did this happen? Why did that happen? No no it just happened,” Hopes said.

“There was a stage where I reckon we were looking at 220, 225 and we just kept pegging him back at the right time. We never went for that big over of 18, 19. We kept pegging him at 10, 11 knowing that we got Arshdeep coming at the end and Azmatullah bowled beautifully tonight as well,” Hope said.

“So our bowling group hung in there and gave us a score that we could chase and yeah, our batters did the rest,” he said.

.”Taking on Bumrah in the first over not only has a flow=on effect for his bowling but for the rest of the team as well because we were having the chats half-time,” Hopes said on the way top order handled Bumrah.

“ Shreyas played some ridiculously good shots of him at the end.I think there’s going to be a fair bit of excitement around but I think it’s our job as coaches and the franchise in general,” he said

“ So tomorrow will be just about the guys recovering and getting mentally prepared for what I imagine is going to be a pretty big crowd and a pretty big pro-Kohli crowd as well I would have thought,” Hopes said about the final against Royal Challengers Bengaluru.

“We just kept saying to our guys like we worked for two months to earn ourselves a second chance and we’re now going to have to cash that second chance in. We don’t change the way we play,” he said.

“We’re just going to move on to the next game and trust that our skills are in a good spot and I think tonight showed our skills are still in a good spot,” Hopes said.