IPL 10: Dan Christian showers praises on teammates Ben Stokes, Imran Tahir

A superlative knock from the English all-rounder Ben Stokes set the stage for yet another home win for the Rising Pune Supergiant this season. RPS now stand comfortably in the points table with 12 points to their credit. Two more wins and they will see themselves in the playoffs. It was their most recent win over the Gujarat Lions that has been doing the rounds in the media at the moment.

Chasing a modest 161 to win, the Supergiant were struggling at 10/3 when Ben Stokes arrived at the crease. The hard-hitting all-rounder did a phenomenal job by anchoring the run chase to perfection. He hit an unbeaten 103 off just 63 balls to help RPS register a 5-wicket win. Needless to say, his teammate Dan Christian was more than happy to shower praises on him.

In a conversation with IPLt20.com, Dan Christian noted that the addition of Ben Stokes and Imran Tahir has been the biggest plus for them in the season thus far. He lauded the century knock from Stokes and commended Tahir for getting crucial breakthroughs for the team with the ball. He remarked that the dismissals of Aaron Finch and Dwayne Smith in succession by Tahir set up the things for RPS in the first innings.

“That’s as good as an innings you will see in Twenty20 cricket. Coming in at 3 for 10, and getting a hundred in just 60-odd balls is just a fantastic thing for Ben Stokes and also for us. Imran Tahir has been brilliant for us this season. There are a couple of games where they have got a hold of him. He has been going for a lot of runs, but has been taking lots of wickets in that middle period,” quoted Christian.

“Getting Aaron Finch and Dwayne Smith out quickly helped us restrict them to a small total. It has been a pretty impressive performance. To be at 3 for 10 and to win the game, with Stokes getting his 100 in the last over is pretty interesting and fantastic to be a part of,” he added further.

Elaborating more on the Ben Stokes knock, Christian said that they had full faith in the hitting ability of the Durham star. All they hoped was for the bowlers to miss their lengths by a margin so that they could capitalize on them. The wicket and outfield would do the rest.

“We knew Ben could hit the pretty well. We just had to wish them to miss their yorkers or give him a length ball, and also take the ones and couple in between. The wicket also was really good, and the outfield was obviously pretty fast here. We were pretty confident, but we stayed as calm as we could,” remarked the Aussie all-rounder.

Speaking about the other ton that mesmerized the IPL audiences this week, Christian hailed the century knock by Sunrisers Hyderabad skipper David Warner. He called the knock to be a dominant one and hailed it as a fantastic peformance.

“Yeah, obviously that was a brilliant performance as well. He was very dominant on the top there. I think he got it in the 11th over or so, obviously a fantastic performance from him as well,” he said.

Talking about the overall experience in the tournament thus far, Christian looked pretty excited about the season. He noted that there have been some brilliant performances with both bat and the ball. Hence, there is definitely nothing short on the entertainment quotient.

“It has been a great tournament so far. (there have been) Fantastic performances with both bat and the ball. We have seen a couple of hat-tricks as well and hundreds. So obviously, it has been pretty entertaining,” quipped Christian.