Sharjah: While Quinton de Kock started the show at the top for Mumbai Indians with a 39-ball 67, it was Kieron Pollard and Krunal Pandya who helped MI cross the 200-run mark against SunRisers Hyderabad at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium on Sunday.
While Pollard hit an unbeaten 25 off 13 balls, Krunal played a 4-ball cameo that saw him pick 20. Not to forget Hardik Pandya’s 19-ball 28. And speaking to the host broadcasters in the mid-innings break, Pollard said that the trio works as the engine room for the MI unit.
“We look at us (him and Pandya brothers) as the engine room in the car without the engine you can’t move. We need to go there, but the speed on and up the run rate, some days it will happen some days it won’t but when it gets off we have to make sure we make it count. Just petrol, clean petrol (the fuel that gets them going),” he explained.
Asked about defending the total on the slightly smaller ground, Pollard said that there is no room for error and the bowlers need to keep things tight and bowl in good areas.
“We need to be spot on (with the ball), bowl on the stumps and realize there is not much bounce on the wicket. We have to start well and in the end, we have to use the dimensions even though it is a small ground,” he said.
The yorker has been talked about a lot in the ongoing tournament as even the otherwise lethal delivery has been dug out by batsmen and what is worse is that runs have been scored from the yorker. But Pollard believes it is still a wicket-taking delivery.
“But what we have seen is a yorker is still a yorker in this form of cricket, we have tried all sorts of different things like slower balls into the wicket, again a yorker is a yorker even the best, in the end, cannot hit a yorker,” he said.