League defeats won’t affect Mumbai’s final performance: Karn Sharma

BENGALURU, May 20: Mumbai Indians’ Karn Sharma is confident of winning the IPL final against Rising Pune Supergiant even though they had lost all three league matches against them.

“We are fully prepared and we will win the finals. That is for sure. The losses were in the past,” he told reporters in post-match press conference here.

Mumbai had lost all the three matches against Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Steve Smith’s side in league stages.

Asked was there any pressure on him justify his selection over Harbhajan Singh, the Railways leg-break bowler said that the decision is not in his hands and gets motivated by the thought of performing well and winning match for the team.

“That is not in my hands. The team needs me at that time and I just want to bowl well and win the match for them.

That’s more important. I am working hard even when I am not playing. The main motivation when I get a game is to perform for the team and help the team win,” Sharma said.

Asked what was his strategy to get KKR’s left-handers Sunil Narine and Gautam Gambhir, Sharma said the team had different plans for different batsmen.

For Narine, they were asked to bowl stump to stump line as he swings his bat at every possible opportunity.

“We have different plans for different batsmen. For Narine, we wanted to bowl at the stumps because he has a very good bat swing. We had different plans for different batsmen and that’s what I executed,” he said.

Replying to a query, Sharma said T20 is about momentum and hence the team won the game despite the wicket being a bit slow.

“It was a little bit slow. It was not like the earlier Bangalore wickets. But it was good that we bowled well from the start and got wickets. T20 is all about momentum. We started well in the first six overs and that s why we won the game,” he said.

Even KKR’s Piyush Chawla conceded that it was a slow track but 107 was never going to be enough.

“It was a slow wicket, not a regular Bangalore wicket but getting out for 107 is not enough, we need to work hard on our batting,” Chawla said.

Chawla defended the shot selection of some of the KKR batsmen.

“It (shot selection) completely depends on the batsman; if someone is good at something then they back themselves.

Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn’t. Once you are defending 107 runs then you try and get wickets at regular intervals. We didn’t bat well that’s why we managed to get just 107. -PTI