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Exclusive: Delhi now in a good space to take on Mumbai, writes Ramiz Raja
DC head coach Ricky Ponting after the win over SRH. (IPL)
A fly-on-the-wall account of two final team meetings
The MI huddle
We have been there before and have cracked the code. It’s 13-15-17-19. It’s time to become heroes again! Our greatest strength is our ability to find winners in tough situations. Our two pacers Jasprit Bumrah and Trent Boult have 49 wickets, and our young guns are blazing. Delhi’s weakness is us — they have lost to us badly in the last game. They have never been in a final and with a young group of players playing under a young captain (Shreyas Iyer), it may very well form a stumbling block in their pursuit.
Anrich Nortje can go for runs as he can be one dimensional. If Kagiso Rabada has a bad day we can win the game. His hard length was targeted brilliantly by Ishan Kishan in the last game. Let’s put pressure on him again. Ravichandran Ashwin can be thrown out of rhythm with a single hit as he then goes into a preemptive mode. Marcus Stoinis against spin can be calmed down. Shikhar Dhawan has to be attacked early by pace. Shimron Hetmyer likes the off side boundary while Rishabh Pant likes the leg side fence. Let’s block their strength and look to take the pace off the ball against them. Iyer has been going out to bat with extra weight of captaincy and has been spasmodic in response. A failure at no 4 for him can derail the middle order charge.
The DC huddle
One more day of good cricket and the Trophy is ours. The advantage with a young team playing their first final is that they have no baggage to carry and no reputation to worry about. Rabada and Nortje as a pair have 49 wickets, Stoinis is hitting the headlines at the right time and Shikhar is having his best IPL. Good that we had a close game against SRH as it tested our big match temperament. We are now in a good space to take on MI. It was a freakish show from their new ball bowlers to have us down in a few overs. It can’t happen again. Rohit Sharma has looked rusty and an out of touch opener is a blessing for any opposition. Got to use more bouncers at their late order. In fact even against Suryakumar Kumar and Ishan we can take that short ball route. Think we should look to bat first. Chasing in a final can have more pressure and if we can force MI to mix their aggression with caution it may disrupt their instinctive aggressive style and yield great results for us!
Now, allow me to reproduce the 1992 World Cup final talk by Imran Khan: “Go out there and enjoy the stage, we may never be part of something like that in our careers ever again”.
Few lines that worked perfectly for us. Keep it simple, keep it light!
Ramiz Raja scored 349 runs with two hundreds when Pakistan won the 1992 World Cup under Imran Khan
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