Moody aims for flying finish

Mohali: Kings XI Punjab coach Tom Moody finally sported a smile as he spoke to the media after only their third win of IPL 2010, against table toppers Mumbai Indians. Here's more from his interaction with the media.

Excerpts:

On whether the win was too little too late: Look, at the end of the day we still hurt, we know obviously we’re waiting on other results but at the end of the day, just talking about this match, it was pleasing to play as well as we did in all three departments. I thought we fielded well today, bowled well, restricted, you know, a strong batting line-up and finished the job well with the bat.

On whether he will consider resting the India internationals ahead of the ICC World T20: Not at all, no. We are still playing to win every single match, and we’ll be putting the best combination on the park, simple as that. We’ve had a disappointing tournament to this stage, but we can still walk away from IPL 2010 with our heads held very high, if we continue to win a few matches in the closing stages of the tournament.

On Adrian Barath and other new inclusions: Yeah, look, at the end of the day, it’s probably a bit hard on Ravi Bopara to be left out, you know he’s had a reasonably good tournament. He’s up there in the leading run-scorers but, you know, at the end of the day we were looking at trying a different combination to see whether that would click us into gear. Plus, also give an opportunity, you know [to] Adrian, [who] has done everything right off the field in preparation, hasn’t had really a fair chance. And hence he got a chance tonight along with (Reetinder) Sodhi and Love Ablish. So in the closing matches we’ll try to create a few opportunities for a few players, and give them some exposure and obviously learn from what they are capable of doing out in the middle.

On Mumbai having the luck of the draw in playing at home early on: You can look into it as closely as you like, at the end of the day I thought Mumbai was playing the best cricket in the first half of the tournament. Yeah they’ve lost a bit of momentum, and you know Sachin (Tendulkar) was very much dictating terms at the top of the order. And, to be fair, so have a number of the other Indian players in the side, so, you know, momentum is so important in this tournament and I am sure Mumbai will be wanting to make sure they get back on track as soon as possible. Because there is no doubt they will be playing in the semi-finals, but they need to be playing in them in form with some momentum.

On whether he wishes this was his first match (as coach) rather than 11th: If I could have one wish that’d probably be it, yeah.

On the IPL being helpful in producing good young players: Oh, look, what we’ve seen in the last three seasons is that the mature players have done exceptionally well, and I think that’s because of the experience they have under pressure. They know how to deal with situations better than a younger player, but what we’ve also seen on the other side of it is a lot of, I suppose, not well known players, you know, stand out and have the light shone on them. Whereas, possibly, if this tournament wasn’t in existence we wouldn’t know of those players and they’d be waiting in the queue for opportunities to play in their own states or clubs or wherever it may be. So what it has done is turned over a number of stones and under those stones we’ve found a lot of talent. And what we will find going forward is more and more stones turned over and opportunities created for any player that has a passion and a talent to play the game.

On Piyush Chawla’s brilliant spell: Yeah, look, he, you know, bowled exceptionally well today, and I think he showed exactly why he’s in the Indian T20 World Cup squad. He’s a talented cricketer, there is no question about that. And he did certainly do a terrific job in the early overs for us. Something that we haven’t done this tournament is taken wickets in the first 10 overs. And that’s what we did tonight, and it put Mumbai under pressure, because we had wickets in the bag in the first 10 overs. In a lot of our other games, we’ve found it difficult to take wickets in the first 10 overs and hence the last 10 overs have been costly because batsmen have been established and have managed to get a substantial total or chase down whatever total we’ve had.