Sunrisers Hyderabad had a good chance to scent victory against Chennai Super Kings in Thursday’s tie had a regular bowler bowled the final over instead of Ashish Reddy. Plus the choice of Amit Mishra as a pinch-hitter too fell flat.
But Tom Moody, coach of Sunrisers defends both the decisions and believes that Dhoni took the match away from them and felt Chennai and India were lucky to have him as captain. “You may consider it strange. T20 is all about element of surprise. Sending Mishra higher up the order was because he was in good form and also we wanted some power hitters to enhance the total at the end of innings. As for choosing Ashish Reddy instead of Darren Sammy, it is one of those decisions that the captain could make under pressure. You have got a choice of two or three bowlers at a time and obviously the captain Cameron White was to go with Ashish because he had a good knock with the bat and guess he threw the ball to him for the last over.
You know anyone could have gone at the last over. It is certainly no fault of the bowler or the captain when the game is played particularly when you are bowling at someone like Dhoni. It is always going to be a tough task,’’ opined Moody.
Moody was the coach of Kings XI Punjab in 2010 and when Dhoni came up with brilliant knock in a must-win league game.How does he compare Dhoni’s 2010 knock to that of Thursday’s? “I managed to forget that 2010 knock. Dhoni is special. It is as simple as that. We see him in any form of the game he performs remarkably. Now is another example that he is a very special cricketer and a very special leader. Chennai and India are very lucky to have him,’’ said Moody.
Meanwhile, Steve Rixon, the fielding coach of CSK, agreed that bowling at the death was a problem for his side. “We are trying to execute to our skills. At the moment it (death bowling) has not been done effectively. We are looking for the right combinations,’’ he said.