IPL 2018: Rohit Sharma thanks Evin Lewis for allowing him to settle at the crease

Things looked quite obnoxious for Rohit Sharma and his troops as they lost two wickets off the first two balls against the Royal Challengers Bangalore at Wankhede the other night. But as it turned out, a couple of fantastic innings from Evin Lewis and Rohit Sharma played a crucial role in helping them amass a gigantic total and win the game with ease.

The skipper played a fantastic inning and came very close to scoring the first hundred of this year’s IPL. Rohit was caught at long-on after scoring 94 amazing runs for the side and helping them amass 213 runs in their 20 overs. As one would expect, he was very proud of his side’s performance and also thanked Evin Lewis specifically for allowing him to settle in.

“With Evin Lewis batting, anything can happen, he is a great striker of the ball and anything in his area he is going to smash it and that is what he did. It allowed me to take my time, which was very crucial. We always wanted one set batsman to bat as long as possible and (it was a) perfect platform for me to do that,” explained Rohit.

McClenaghan and Krunal were brilliant: Rohit

Rohit also spoke at length about what all went wrong in the first few games. He termed inconsistency as the main reason behind their failure and the main goal was to perform well with the bat and ball.

“The only thing we did not do as a group in the last three games was sometimes (when) we batted well, (then) we did not bowl well. (When) we bowled well, we did not bat well. The idea was to get both of these departments going and we wanted to be consistent – our bowling as well as batting,” said the MI skipper.

He also mentioned that Mitchell McClenaghan and Krunal Pandya were outstanding with the ball. He hailed the variations Krunal brought into play and heaped praises on McClenaghan’s incredible spell in the Powerplay. Young bowler Mayank Markande has the Purple cap yet again and his skipper was very proud of his achievement.

“Today we did that and we got wickets with the new ball. Mitch bowled a great spell upfront to get the experienced batsmen out, and then Krunal came in and used his variation to his advantage.

“He reads the batsman really well and not to forget Mayank, he is just 20-year old playing his fourth game and to come out and bowl in such difficult conditions, it is not easy,” the 30-year-old batsman added.

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