I followed Dhoni's advice in previous match : Ishan Kishan

Gujarat Lion’s batsman Ishan Kishan had a good previous match against the Royal Challengers Bangalore where he scored a quick 39 of 16 deliveries but could not guide his team to victory. Gujarat fell 21 runs short of Royal Challengers’ huge total of 213 as they could only manage 192 in their 20 overs.

The Gujarat team would like to change their fortunes and get back to winning ways in their next match against the Kolkata Knight Riders and Ishan Kishan promised a repeat of his performance against the RCB. He also stated that he tried to play his natural game in the tough run chase as advised by Mahendra Singh Dhoni when they were both playing for Jharkhand.

“Actually, while batting in the previous match, I had tried to follow Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s philosophy. We had Mahi in Jharkhand dressing room this season for a long time during the domestic season. He always advised all of us to exhibit natural batting even during a crisis. I tried to follow that advice in my previous innings against RCB,” Ishan was quoted as saying by One India.

But in spite of putting up a good show, Kishan looked extremely disappointed with the fact that his team ended up on the losing side.

How can I be happy? We could not win the match. That is the main thing for any cricketer in a team.

The young batsman looked absolutely confident ahead of the match against KKR though he admitted that it would be quite difficult to handle a strong KKR bowling line up.

“Yes, they have bowlers like Kuldeep Yadav, Sunil Narine. But from my perspective I can say, after having scored 39 runs (2×4, 4×6) off only 16 runs against RCB I have gained confidence. It will help me in tomorrow’s match.”

The Jharkhand batsman hailed English all-rounder Chris Woakes as the most dangerous bowler in the KKR side but once again aims at applying Dhoni’s philosophy which had helped him get runs in the previous game.

“Narine and Yadav are extremely good bowlers. But I feel the most dangerous bowler in KKR is Chris Woakes. Still I will not look at who is bowling against me. I will go to the pitch and try to follow Mahi’s philosophy again by executing my natural batting. But at the same time, I will be happy if my team can beat KKR who are in tremendous form in last couple of matches”