Yuzvendra Chahal
Royal Challengers Bangalore left-arm pacer George Garton heaped praise on Yuzvendra Chahal, who bowled a game-changing spell of 3/29 pushing Punjab Kings out of match after KL Rahul's side was in control till the 10th over of chase.
RCB scored 164 for 7 and then restricted Punjab Kings to 158 for 6 largely due to Chahal's spell after a fine opening stand of 91 between Rahul and Mayank Agarwal.
"I think he (Chahal) bowled brilliantly, he again, he knows that the key role in the middle for him, to come on, with a bit of turn on this pitch and he took crucial wickets at crucial times as well to kind of stem them back," Garton said at the post-match press conference.
"And he (Chahal) kind of controlled the run-rate and make (made) sure that we had a good chance going into the last four overs and he bowled brilliantly," said Garton.
Garton, who has come in as a replacement during the UAE phase is liking the team environment as a play-off qualification has definitely helped their confidence.
"You have seen Maxi (Glenn Maxwell) has been in brilliant form, and the whole bowling unit has been good. The confidence is high and everyone is having a great time," he said.
Meanwhile, Punjab Kings all-rounder Moises Henriques lamented that his team could not build a partnership, except the one by KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal.
"It is hard to put a finger on it, they won the game by six runs. …from when they took that first wicket of KL, we just kept losing regular wickets and we weren’t able to build another partnership," Henriques said at the post-match press conference.
Henriques feels that Rahul and Mayank's departure at the start of the back-10 became crucial.
"Instead of having set-batters in the last three or four overs, we had new batters all the time, so you know, we saw what happened there at the end for them (RCB) when they had Maxwell batted really deep into the last over. Once they took that first wicket, they were able to keep taking wickets continuously," he signed off.
