“It was just one run… Say if you could have run one harder, it could have been a different game.”
After doing everything right except find the winning runs against Gujarat Lions on Wednesday night, Delhi Daredevils’ Chris Morris appeared like a man hurting badly but still had to relive the pain twice as he shared his thoughts with the media-persons after the close finish.
Morris’s unbeaten 32-ball 82 lifted Daredevils from the depths of despair to the threshold of triumph. He described it as probably his best T20 innings and said, “It is just one of those days to me when the balls come on to the middle from ball one. Today was my day and fortunately it worked for me. It is upsetting we lost though.”
Before going in, Morris had a chat with the team’s mentor Rahul Dravid and said, “If I’m going, I’ll go at it from ball one. He said give yourself one or two. But it was obvious what we needed to do.
“I just played my natural game. If the ball is in my zone, I just go after it, even if we needed say five an over. That’s just the way I play my game. It was quite simple what I needed to do — play some big shots and get some runs. Luckily it worked today.”
Reflecting on what he and J-P. Duminy thought of the chase at 57 for four during their chase of 173, Morris said, “We targeted the short boundary more than the bowler, actually. As I said, it was a quite a good wicket. It was skidding on nicely, with all the dew.
“But J-P, you know, played one hell of a knock. Unfortunately when he got out, it was a vital part of the game. It set up the game. So, as I said, instead of targeting a certain bowlers, if it was in our zones, we were going to have a go at it. But yeah, the short boundary played quite a big role.”
For the Lions, Praveen Kumar’s effort in restricting Daredevils to just four runs off the 19th over was of paramount importance.
Looking back at the over, Praveen said, “The mindset was simple — to bowl to my strengths. I knew I could bowl good yorkers, so that’s what I wanted to do. I could have bowled a slower one but it’s a 50-50. If it hits the middle of the bat then it would have gone for a six. Or it could have been a dot ball. I didn’t want to take a risk. I thought I should bowl to my strengths and hence the yorkers.”
