Angelo Mathews confident of beating Mumbai Indians

Delhi Daredevils cricketer Angelo Mathews feels that his side has the capability of beating Mumbai Indians who are playing exceptional cricket at the moment. Mumbai are comfortably sitting at the top of the table with 10 points in their bag. They played brilliantly in their last match to chase down a huge target of 198 runs with 27 balls to spare.

The Sri Lankan stressed on the fact that Delhi has the required firepower to outclass a strong team like Mumbai. But at the same time, he also accepted that their players have not been able to click in the tournament so far and he expects them to come good in the next match.

“Mumbai have been playing extremely good cricket, as was the case last night (against KXIP). We certainly can beat them and we have the skill and firepower to do it,” he told PTI.

“If you look at the last 5-6 games Mumbai has played, they have been on a roll, home or away. It’s a tough ask but we have the firepower to do it. It’s just that we need to click”

Angelo Mathews believes that Delhi came close in all their games but could not end up on the winning side. He also gave credit to a strong Hyderabad bowling line-up which did not allow the Delhi batsman to swing their willows freely.

“All our games were very close, but could not pull it off. Next time we should be able to do it if we come close”

“If you watch the last game it’s really hard to explain what went wrong. Credit should go to Bhuvi (Bhuvneshwar Kumar) and other bowlers. They bowled yorkers and did not give us anything to hit.”

But the 29-year-old is confident of his team’s abilities and is proud of the fact that they have played as a team throughout.

“We have not got so many superstars in our team, but we have got a good set of players who can win games and that’s all matters. We have played as a team right though. We are on the verge of winning games and I am sure we can pull it off tomorrow”

The right-handed all-rounder also said that they have immense young talent in their team and heaped praise on the likes of Sanju Samson, Karun Nair, Shreyas Iyer and Shahbaz Nadeem.

“When you play competitive cricket and when you score and take wickets against international players, it shows you have something in you. In our team, we have Sanju Samson, who is 22 years old, Karun Nair, Shreyas Iyer. Shahbaz (Nadeem) has been bowling well for so many seasons. The amount of talent is unbelievable”

When asked about his international teammate Lasith Malinga’s failure in the last game Mathews told that Malinga will come back stronger in the next game.

“Anyone can have a bad day, especially in T20 cricket and it’s very difficult to be consistent throughout the long season of 14 games. Lasith has proved himself as one of the best bowlers in shorter format. He will definitely come back.”

He also hoped that more Sri Lankans would be picked up in the coming years by the franchises in the IPL and hailed the elite tournament as one of the best in the world.

“IPL is very competitive tournament. The cream of international players play here. Obviously playing competitive cricket is very good, but unfortunately not many of us are in IPL and hopefully, more will be there in the coming years.”