David Miller during CSK vs GT match
David Miller, who was not a sure starter in the playing eleven for his previous two IPL teams, is loving being "100 percent backed" by Gujarat Titans.
Miller smashed a 51-ball 94 to help Gujarat Titans pull off an incredible come-from-behind three-wicket win over Chennai Super Kings on Sunday night.
The South African played a game-changing knock in the IPL after a long time.
"The last two-three-four years I have been playing really nice cricket, feeling positive and I have been scoring nice personally, back at home, overseas, and so on, unfortunately the last four-five years, I haven’t really played as much IPL cricket as I would have liked to," he said at the post-match media interaction.
"... the nature of the game, tournament (is such that) there are only four overseas (players) and other overseas players are always going to miss out and I sort of found myself in between a place where I have been in and out of Kings XI (Punjab Kings) and then Rajasthan. I played some decent games there but I felt like I couldn’t get going and it has been encouraging to be part of Gujarat Titans and just know I am 100 per cent backed, and have a really nice environment, enjoy each other's success, that goes a long way in doing well, but more importantly it is nice to play every game."
He started the innings pretty well and did not want to stop after that.
“Yes, I mean we were obviously in a little bit of trouble, but I still thought, if we batted 20 overs, we still had some sort of chance and you never know if you were sitting on the sideline. So, I just wanted to try and play my game, the way I started my innings, I thought I started pretty well and I didn’t want to stop, I wanted to keep going,” Miller said.
Gujarat were reeling at 87/5 in pursuit of 170, but then Miller and stand-in-captain Rashid Khan joined forces as they added match-winning 70 runs for the sixth wicket.
“The (run) rate was already at 9 or 10 when I came in; it had gone up pretty quickly. I mean at the end of the day, I cannot control what sort of the other batters do and at that time, whoever was batting with me, I just wanted to try and build something with him and see where it goes,” added Miller, when asked what his mindset was when the team was five down.
Miller said that the plan to attack CSK spinners worked and they were forced to bowl the pacers.
“They had three spinners and I thought if they bowl well, they are definitely bowl all the overs towards me, and then try and change up the pace bowlers and work it around, but the fact that we took them (spinners) on early on, they were forced to bowl the pace bowlers and that was pretty much the plan,” he added.
