Lakshmipathy Balaji, who turned in a dazzling performance to claim four wickets for just 18 runs in 4 overs, turned the tides and enabled Kolkata Knight Riders win their first match in three outings in IPL-V today, said bowling coach Wasim Akram’s influence on the team enabled it to win against Strong Royal Challengers Bangalore. KKR dominating from the start, beat last year’s finalists by 42 runs at M Chinnaswamy stadium here, after losing their first two games. ‘Wasim has been a great influence on our entire bowling department, which boast of Brett Lee is one of the leading wicket-taker in world cricket.
These two players really mean to our bowling line-up. They share lot of things that they have come up with that kind of helping hands motivates every youngster in the team,’ he told reporters at the post match press conference. Balaji, who had some good times with the Indian cricket team but suffered a back injury that laid him low for a long time, said for today’s KKR win, credit should be given to Lee and Jacques (2-0-07-2) who started the ‘game plan’ really well. ‘Khallis got the initial breakthrough that helped the team getting momentum. This helped my rhythm as well,’ he said. Balaji stressed that keeping things simple and the rhythm are the two most important factors for bowlers in T20 cricket. IPL being a very long tournament, batsmen always keep coming hard at the bowlers, he said. He said KKR middle order collapse was not a big worry as the team had individuals with tremendous capabilities and they can deliver and execute the team’s plans. ‘If we keep doing this, good results will follow,’ he said. When asked which of the other teams is the favourite to win tournament, the right arm speedster said all nine teams in the IPL had tremendous balance and this year the competition will be very stiff. “We will see lot of surprises, especially in the last part of the series. All the nine teams have got tremendous balance.
This year there will be lot of competitive league. He said today’s win helped the youngsters in the team to believe in themselves. ‘This win was a must for us and definitely it is a good start.’ RCB skipper Daniel Vettori defended fielding first after winning the toss, but the batting was undone by fine bowling by Jacques Khallis, Brett Lee and more importantly Balaji. ‘We lost too many wickets in the first six overs and that proved our undoing. We had done well to come back after Gambhir and others gave a good start to Riders. But we must give due credit to the KKR bowlers,’ said a disappointed captain. RCB had entered into the match as a favourites but ended up losers by a long way after KKR dominated them throughout. UNI