James Hopes credits PBKS bowlers for pegging MI back to 203 when at one stage it looked like 220 was achievable.
Punjab Kings bowling coach James Hopes credits his bowlers for restricting Mumbai Indians to just 203 in their Qualifier 2 match yesterday.
Sent into bat, MI had raced to 65 for 1 inside the powerplay and regularly went at better than ten runs an over through the middle phase.
With Tilak Varma and Suryakumar Yadav finding the boundaries with ease and constantly getting 10-15 runs an over in the mid-overs exchanges, it felt like the 5-time champions would achieve a 220+ score with ease and then some.
But the PBKS bowlers struck at regular intervals to prevent the death-overs assault.
James Hopes tips his hat to the bowlers
“There was a stage where I reckon they [MI] were looking at 220, 225 and we just kept pegging them back at the right time,” Hopes said in a press conference after PBKS qualified for their first IPL final in 11 years. “We never went for that big over of 18, 19. We kept pegging them at 10, 11 knowing that we got Arshdeep [Singh] coming at the end and Azmatullah [Omarzai] bowled beautifully as well.
“We gave them a few extra runs, yeah, but that’s why I was saying I thought they were going to get 220. There was a bit of confidence in our group when they only got 200 [203], thinking we’ve dragged them back here. You could even tell our first over batting the way the ball came off the bat, it was just skipping off the bat a little more and you could tell there was just a little bit of dew, a little bit of wetness out there, that was going to help us, and it did.”
Hopes on Inglis’ assault on Bumrah
It was going to be difficult to chase 204 against five-time champions MI, who had never lost a game while defending a score of more than 200. Particularly when Jasprit Bumrah, who entered the match with an economy rate of 6.36, was leading the bowling group.
Josh Inglis, however, was not going to let Bumrah settle in, and he gave the chase the impetus it need by smashing him for two sixes and two fours in his opening over, the fifth of the innings.
“The way Josh Inglis attacked Boom [Bumrah] up front to get him off his game a little bit… if you’d told us we were chasing 200 at the start of the day and we were going to take 40 off Jasprit, we would have taken that every day of the week and liked our chances,” Hopes said. “Josh has got a pretty good record against him in short-form cricket. He plays him well.
“I don’t think it was a conscious decision to go after [Bumrah in that] over. He just got some balls and he put them away, and on another day, those balls go to the fielder and he’s not taking what he did off that over. So doing that to him in the first over not only has a flow-on effect for his bowling but has a flow-on effect for the rest of their team as well.
“We were having the chats at half-time that if Bumrah bowls four overs for 26, what do we need off the other 16 overs? So there’s just an expectation he’s going to be at a certain level every game, and even tonight he bowled well.”