Bengaluru: Deccan Chargers captain Adam Gilchrist’s decision to pushed Tirumalasetti Suman up the batting order paid dividends against Royal Challengers Bangalore on Thursday. Suman was promoted from his usual six or seven position to number three, from where he smashed 78 from 57 balls to steer his team to victory. Here is the DC media interaction after the match.
Excerpts:
Suman on his willingness to bat wherever his team needs him: I don’t feel only opening the innings [suits me]… I like any position that the team requires, team interest is what comes first.
Gilchrist then took centre stage in the press conference, starting with the tactic of moving Suman up to number three: It was what we planned. Su (Suman), last year and this year batted in a variety of positions for us and that’s great, he’s quite a flexible player. As we saw tonight he’s got a nice power game when required, but he also has a nice touch at other times too, so, whatever is required. I thought he paced [his innings] beautifully and really thought about his batting tonight.
On the win: Yes, it’s nice to have a win, as I said out in that post-match presentation, that I think we sort of improved about 90% of our game too. The batting was well-paced and obviously to perfection by the end. The bowling, 90% of the bowling was fantastic and then we fell into a little hole, we had the fall. So we [have] still got things to work on but [this is] no doubt a much more pleasing result than what we’ve had in the previous five games.
On whether he thought the game would slip away with Rohit Sharma’s fall: No, no, I felt on that ground, anything was possible. We’ve watched with interest Bangalore chase, I think, 200 against Kings XI. The way Suman was playing - his intent and the way he was hitting the ball - he thought about his batting and, you know, (Andrew) Symonds and Mitchell Marsh and Venu (Venugopal Rao) in the shed, I felt it was still achievable, particularly given how their innings went. It was always going to be a little bit difficult against the new ball on that pitch, but then a flood of runs were always a potential at the end of the innings.
On DC’s semi-final prospects: Semi-final prospects, haha, we will slow down a little bit, we’ll just savour a win tonight. And obviously we’ve got a hard road as a result of the disappointments of the previous couple of weeks, so we will just refocus after this. We’ve got Chennai in two days time so it’s a busy little schedule for us. But we’ve just got to break it down a little bit, we won’t sit back tonight and start talking semi-finals again all of a sudden. We’ll just start talking about what we did well tonight and Chennai coming up on Saturday.
On having such a difficult schedule (having three home bases of Navi Mumbai, Nagpur and Cuttack): Yes, It has been difficult, I think it has had an effect on the players - just general travel tiredness, it does grind and wear you down a bit. Up to this point I wouldn’t put it down to a reason why we’ve lost matches in the last five games. We don’t like to use tiredness as an excuse - our motto is that there is no such thing as tiredness, but it is difficult, there is no doubt about it. And it’s something we’ll all sit down with the IPL at the end and consider what the options may be if ever that situation arises again and obviously we, as a franchise, will learn from this too. Because I don’t know intricate detail, whether we could have had one city as a base or what the details were. But, yes, it’s been difficult.
On whether he feels he is back to his best (after a 19-ball 32): Yeah, it was good to stay there (in the middle) a bit longer, but whether I get, you know, 30 off a dozen balls or 30 off 20 or 25, it’s not about that individual result, it’s the impact that it has on the game. Sometimes 30 off 12 balls is perfect, some days it’s a bit longer or a bit slower. So I felt…we lost an early wicket so it was good to get that partnership going and that’s what we’ve lacked, partnerships. And Su (Suman) was batting with such great intent, that I was happy to play second fiddle to him for a little while.
On conceding so many runs in the last five overs (77): Oh, no doubt, it’s a concern - something we need to keep ticking over in our mind and looking at ways we can improve on it. I guess we have got to take into account tonight, if you look at their last five overs, I wouldn’t have thought they went for quite as many as us, but it may be similar. So it was obviously that sort of wicket tonight, tough early but a flood of runs at the end. But, yeah, it has been a common threat for us, particularly in those losses. It was evident in some of those wins early on in the tournament, we are still leaking a bit too much at the end.
On his favourite super hero: I’d have to say, on behalf of my son, a character called Ben 10. He’s A grade, he can be about 10 different things at once - it’s modern day. Obviously I would think Superman, but for my son I’ll say Ben 10.
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