NEWS
Follow UsSuryakumar Yadav started the season on a rather disappointing note, which was reflected in the performance of Mumbai Indians, but things changed pretty quickly when the batter found his groove. After burying Royal Challengers Bangalore with an effervescent 83 in the previous game, Surya scored a casual century like an everyday affair to put Mumbai Indians in the second spot on the points table.
The Indian T20 No.4 batter hit 11 fours and six sixes in his innings of 103 runs and got to the triple-figure mark off the final ball of the innings with him needing three runs for the century, he smashed six. Mumbai Indians' Akash Madhwal is just happy that he didn’t have to bowl to Suryakumar Yadav in a match, for he believes Surya happens to be the best batter he has ever bowled to.
“Bowling to him is very difficult. I have bowled to pretty good batters but SKY happens to be someone extraordinary,” Madhwal said in the post-match press conference.
“The shots he practices in the nets come off as it is when he plays them on the field. So it is very difficult to bowl to him. Even in the practice matches, he pulls off these kinds of shots out of nowhere. The best thing about these shots as a bowler during practice matches is that they seem gorgeous. Haven’t seen anyone bat like him yet.”
Uttarakhand's Madhwal was in pretty good nick with the ball last night, having grabbed three wickets for 31 runs. Even though the initial plan was to hold him for the backend of the innings, Rohit Sharma revealed to him a day early that he would bowl with the new ball - something he cherished going into the game. That changed everything as Gujarat were down to 55/5 - from which they could never recover fully despite Rashid Khan's heroics with the bat.
“Our plan was pretty simple against Titans. We bowled with the intention of choking them for runs at the start. So I stuck to my strength which is bowling hard lengths throughout my spell of four overs,” Madwal said in the post-match press conference.
“My role before this match was to bowl the end overs but Rohit bhaiya informed me a day before the match that I will be bowling in the powerplay overs after seeing me in the nets. He asked me to be ready and when the opportunity arrived, thankfully, I was ready to grab it. It wasn’t easy to bowl slower balls under such conditions so we stuck to the basics and thankfully, executed them pretty well,” the Uttarakhand pacer added.
