Change of captaincy or the whole team coming up and performing all together has certainly worked for the Rising Pune Supergiant. After finishing seventh in the previous season, Pune has managed to the turn their fortunes around and will be clashing the two-times IPL champions Mumbai Indians in the final of IPL 2017. MS Dhoni has been under scrutiny over his performance with the bat this season and this hasn’t stopped the franchise owner Sanjiv Goenka from comparing him to Steve Smith.
“MS is one of the greatest minds I have interacted with. And he is the best wicketkeeper in the world. The one mind ahead of Dhoni’s is Smith’s. My brief to Smith was: ‘win the championship’. The first season was a disaster and I wanted it to end soonest, with our dignity intact,” Goenka said in an exclusive interaction with the Hindustan Times.
After a shaky start in the season, the Supergiant’s won eight of their last 10 league game matches. Their match against MI in the final will be the fourth instance when the two teams will meet each other in the on-going season. Also, RPS is the only second team after Chennai Super Kings, to beat the Rohit Sharma-led side in all their face-offs in a single season.
“It’s difficult to believe the way he has planned some dismissals, the tact and firmness with which he has dealt with tricky situations and the win-or-nothing attitude he has been able to infuse in the team, get them to gel as a unit. And he’s gone out in the strategic timeouts to tell batsmen to either score 30 off the next 12 balls or get out. If we had a bad start, it was because Smith was out with food poisoning.” Goenka added.
Pune added England all-rounder Ben Stokes in their squad for a whopping amount of Rs 14.5 Crore. While, Imran Tahir, who went unsold in the IPL auctions, was later included after Mitchell Marsh was ruled out citing an injury during the Test series between India and Australia.
Washington Sundar and Rahul Tripathi have stood up to expectations as the two youngsters have been consistent and have contributed very well in the success of the team.
“You need to win eight-nine games to make the playoffs and Smith told me that between him, (Imran) Tahir and (Ben) Stokes, we would win seven. And players of the calibre of MS will always give you something. We had more match winners this time, players who would need five-six balls to settle down instead of 20. And we hadn’t factored in Rahul Tripathi, Washington Sundar and Jaydev Unadkat. Tripathi and Sundar are going to be serious players on the Indian cricket scene,” he concluded.
Rising Pune Supergiant cricketer Washington Sundar listens to Steven Smith (R) as Mahendra Singh Dhoni looks on during the first 2017 Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty20 Qualifier 1 cricket match between Mumbai Indians and Rising Pune Supergiants at The Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on May 16, 2017. —-IMAGE RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE – STRICTLY NO COMMERCIAL USE—– / AFP PHOTO / INDRANIL MUKHERJEE / —-IMAGE RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE – STRICTLY NO COMMERCIAL USE—– / GETTYOUT
