NEWS
Follow UsAfter comprehensively defeating Lucknow Super Giants in the Eliminator at Chepauk, Sunil Gavaskar spoke about Rohit Sharma in an interview to India Today.
“The man has won five titles for Mumbai Indians."
He went on to cite the example of Akash Madhwal to make his point.
"Madhwal got Badoni bowling over the wicket. He then went round the wicket to the left-hander Nicholas Pooran. Not a lot of bowlers necessarily do that because if they get their rhythm going bowling over the wicket, they will stick to over the wicket even it’s a left-hander. They will try to the ball away from the left-hander. But he went around the wicket and produced an absolute gem of a delivery and got the man out."
Madhwal ended the game with a five-for, as Mumbai defeated Lucknow by 81 runs.
"If that had been CSK, everybody would have said MS Dhoni plotted Pooran’s dismissal. This is what happens to a great extent. There is also a little bit of hype, things sometimes work out. What I am saying is Rohit Sharma did not get the credit for telling Madhwal to bowl around the wicket," he added.
He then also spoke about the usage of Nehal Wadhera. Having lost a wicket too many, MI decided to lengthen their batting by bringing in Wadhera as their impact player.
After coming in with just about 20 balls to go, Wadhera came up with an impactful cameo to help Mumbai set 183 as the target.
“The captaincy situation as well. Remember, Nehal Wadhera was used as an impact player batting first. Teams generally don’t use batters as Impact Player when they are batting first. But Rohit used Nehwal when MI were batting first against LSG. So please give him credit for that as well," Gavaskar said.
Credit or no credit, Mumbai Indians will be hoping that their skipper once against shows his tactical smarts to help them get over the line against the Gujarat Titans in the second qualifier.
