Star Indian pacer Jasprit Bumrah has come in the defence of his under-fire teammate Umesh Yadav after the RCB cricketer was not able to defend 14 runs in the final over of the first T20 against Australia. The match was played at Dr YS Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium, Visakhapatnam.
Defending Umesh, Bumrah said it was a one-off day when his execution at the death went haywire. With the win, Australia have taken a lead of 1-0 in the two-match T20I series.
Virat Kohli handed the ball to Bumrah in the second last over of the game when Australia needed 16 runs to win the game. In that over, Bumrah gave away only two runs and picked two wickets.
When Bumrah was asked about Yadav’s last over he said, “This happens, death bowling is always difficult in any situation. It always goes both ways and it’s sometimes 50-50.”
“You try your best, and you’re clear in your execution. Some days it works, some days it doesn’t. Nothing to be worried. We wanted to close the game in our favour but it’s okay,” Bumrah said at the post-match news conference.
Bumrah, who bagged 3 wickets and conceded just 16 runs in four overs with 18 dot balls, also pointed out that Australia, having won the toss, had the advantage of knowing what exactly they needed to do on a sluggish surface.
“It’s a little different once you know your target. It was a small target, so once you hit one boundary then you don’t need to take a lot of risks. At first, we are still figuring out what is the safe total so I think that was the difference maybe. They were rotating the strike after hitting a boundary.”
The 25-year-old pacer also said Team India were 15 to 20 runs short as around 140-145 would have been a par score on this wicket.
“We almost pulled off this game. But on this wicket, around 140-145 would have been a very good score. There was low bounce and it was difficult to hit big shots. It’s always difficult to chase on this kind of wickets,” he said, before adding, “We were short by 15-20 runs, but we had a fighting total. Everybody could have taken a little more responsibility but this happens in the game of cricket. We lost two-three wickets more than we wanted to, but we backed our team and wanted to execute whatever we had.”