Mumbai, MAHARASHTRA :

Bengaluru :

RCB’s star batsman AB de Villiers , who guided his team into the IPL final with an unbeaten 47-ball 79 against Gujarat Lions, praised teammate Iqbal Abdulla  for his ‘fantastic’ support. Coming together with the side at 68/6 while chasing 159 on a tricky M Chinnaswamy stadium wicket, Abdulla held his own with an unbeaten 33 off 25 balls to see the home side through with 10 balls to spare.

The South African said he knew from the look in Abdulla’s eyes that the young man was determined to finish the job. “I thought I’d have to say a lot to him but he was probably more calm than me,” De Villiers said. “When he walked up, you could see that he had done this before. He had a calm head and straightaway understood what I was telling him. I didn’t have to talk to him after that. You can see it when you have a connection with someone. He was there to win the game for the team and cross the line with me.”

“I had a lot of self-belief,” said the 26-year-old Abdulla, who has a first class century to his name. “AB only told me to watch the ball and play my shots and that is what I did.”

De Villiers admitted that the wicket was unlike what the teams are used to here, with a total of eight wickets falling in the Powerplay overs. “It was a funny kind of wicket. While we were bowling, I thought anything more than 160 and we would be in trouble. It didn’t seem like a wicket where you can just go out and score. I always felt we needed a foundation in the first six overs but we didn’t get that,” he said, hailing Lions pacer Dhawal Kulkarni for his four-wicket burst.

With a light drizzle midway through e the RCB  innings, De Villiers admitted that the prospect of the tie being decided via the Duckworth-Lewis method had t prompted the team to be more positive in their approach.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> Sports> IPL / TNN / May 26th, 2016