I was mentally prepared to come in as impact player, says Mahipal Lomror

Mahipal Lomror walked in as an impact player when Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) needed 47 from 22 deliveries with four wickets in hand and Dinesh Karthik batting at the other end. The match was in Punjab Kings (PBKS) at that point. But, after Lomror hit his first ball into the fence, he did not look back as he smacked a couple of boundaries in the next 3-4 deliveries to not just bring his side back into the game, but took the pressure of Karthik to a certain extent.

Lomror admitted that the team management had a chat with him the previous night about having him as an impact player for this game and the southpaw was mentally prepared for it.

"As the name suggests, you have to make an impact on the game from the word go. The management had discussed it last night. They told me: 'If we are chasing, we might use you down the order.' So mentally, I was prepared," Lomror told reporters after the game.

While he did his job to perfection, Lomror says he felt the role was "quite weird." "To be honest, it [being an Impact Player] was quite weird when I went into bat. The Impact Player rule is such that you have to be ready as you can get a call at any time to go in," he said.

With the strong batting line-up RCB possess this season, Lomror could be reduced to just playing a similar role he did on March 15 (Monday), and he does not have any issues with that.

"Earlier, I used to bat up the order, and that gave me more balls to bat. But now as an Impact sub, there's not going to be many balls to play. So, whenever I'm going into nets, I just try and hit boundaries from the very first ball," Lomror, who scored an unbeaten 17 off eight deliveries, said.

Speaking of the conversation he had in the middle with Karthik, the 24-year old said, "I think batting with him makes things really easy. He has some 15-17 years of experience in IPL. He was telling me to stay calm and focus on the next ball, not to get overexcited or not to get too aggressive."

Lomror and RCB will hope to make it two on the bounce when they take on Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) next on March 29 (Friday) in Bengaluru.