NEWS
Follow UsTrent Boult might have been the pick of the bowlers on Saturday night, wrapping up the SRH lower-order in no time, but he had a certain Jasprit Bumrah to thank for creating an enormous amount of pressure from the other end with his unplayable deliveries. In his four-over spell, Bumrah didn't even concede a single boundary, which led to the Kiwi man calling the Gujarat pacer as "one the best death bowlers" in the game.
"It's great to see a guy (Bumrah) like that operate. How clear he is with what he is doing with the ball throughout his whole spell. But at the death, I personally believe, he is one of the best death bowlers in the world. He makes my job a heck of a lot easier," Boult said after MI beat Sunrisers Hyderabad by 13 runs on Saturday.
"It is always nice being on the right side of those situations. Hopefully, we can get a bit of momentum into this tournament".
Spinner Rahul Chahar (3/19) and Boult (3/28) did the heavy lifting with the ball, but the sustained effort of the entire team couldn't have been ignored. Boult acknowledged the same, calling the win a total team effort.
"It's hard to pin-point one performance there. A lot of credit to the whole side for hanging in there. We knew we were a few runs short of the par score. But we also knew that this is a pitch where you can fight. And you get a couple of wickets, you can really get back in the chase. I thought a couple of direct hits from Hardik (Pandya) and the three wickets from Rahul were important when we were bowling. And then Bumrah there, bowling his four overs for only 14 was pretty amazing," he added.
Mumbai has managed to defend sub-par scores in the previous two games and Boult feels accuracy is vital while bowling at the Chepauk.
"The contrast between Wankhede and Chepauk Stadium is quite considerable. It looks like it's swinging around nicely and it's a perfect surface in Mumbai. Here as a pace bowler, you got to be extremely accurate. Key has really been our ability to bowl dot balls and keep pushing the run rate."
MI are slated to play their first five matches in Chennai before moving to Delhi, which Boult feels is a positive as that gives a chance for them to settle down at the venue.
"It gives us a chance to settle at the venue. But the key would be to obviously read the conditions quickly as possible and make the most of them really. So, it's a unique situation. We've got five here, four in Delhi, move around a little bit. But, I think especially in the first half of the tournament you obviously get on the right side of a couple of results and it's nice to get those couple of wins in the last two matches," he said.
(With inputs from PTI)