Manoj Tiwary's comments before the semi-final gave Delhi the motivation to perform

The Delhi team stormed into the finals of the Ranji Trophy 2017-18 after securing a massive win over Bengal in the semi-final encounter. A victory by the margin of an innings and 26 runs depicts the dominance of the Delhi team throughout the game. However, their coach KP Bhaskar blames Bengal skipper Manoj Tiwary whose unnecessary pre-match comments cost them the crucial game.

The Delhi bowlers were right on the money after losing the toss and never allowed Bengal to score a big first innings total. Chasing a decent score of 286 runs, both the openers Gautam Gambhir and Kunal Chandela laid the platform for rest of the boys and meanwhile also got to their respective hundreds.

But the rest of the batters failed to consolidate the start, as a result, Bengal bowlers restricted them to 398 runs. Indian pacer Mohammed Shami had the biggest contribution striking six times to crumble Delhi. Still, they managed to get an important lead of 112 runs, after which the Delhi bowling attack wrapped things off pretty quickly to register a historic victory.

Manoj’s comments were not required

Bhaskar believes that the Bengal captain gave his team the much-needed motivation with his remarks before the match. In his view, those comments were not required at all and these things show the overconfidence of the Bengal team.

Before the game, Tiwary talked about the previous clashes between the two domestic teams and warned the opposition. Bhaskar also questioned the tactics and strategies of the opposition in the selection of the team concentrating more on their batting, which eventually led to their defeat.

“Delhi would not have forgotten that we had taken the first-innings lead against them in 2015. And if they have forgotten that, we will remind them on the field from tomorrow,” said Tiwary before the semi-final clash between Delhi and Bengal.

Uncalled for

“It (Tiwary’s comments) was uncalled for. I thought they were probably overconfident, getting 850 [695 for 6] against Gujarat. How can you go with four bowlers against a side like Delhi with Gautam and some of the youngsters around? Probably that means they were relying more on their batting,” said Bhaskar as quoted by India Today.