'Stay calm' was the message when Gayle was on fire: Muttiah Muralitharan

Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) beat Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in the final of the 9th edition of IPL. It was the SRH who won the toss and choose to bat first. They posted a huge 208 runs on the board and in the end, won the match and with that the IPL 2016 trophy by 8 runs.

RCB started off the chase very well, with opener Chris Gayle going guns blazing. But short-spanned dismissals of Gayle, the skipper Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers saw them falling short of the target. SRH’s bowling coach, Muttiah Muralitharan said that his message to the team was to stay calm when Gayle was on song. “Just calm down (Just stay calm). They are hitting hard; we needed to get two people out and then the run rate will increase. That is what happened. It was our day and we had to win the match,” said Muralitharan while speaking to iplt20.com.

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When asked about the message to the bowlers while going to defend against a power-packed RCB batting lineup, he said – “A score in excess of 200 runs is always a very good total. But we knew that they have three dangerous batsmen; we had to get them. We have the bowlers and Mustafizur (Rahman) and Bhuvi (Bhuvneshwar Kumar) were fantastic, as well as the other bowlers. If Chris Gayle and Virat (Kohli) get going it is always very hard. But our batsman had put up a good total (for the bowlers) to defend.”

He credited his batsmen for putting up a total, excess of 200 against a good batting line-up. “(David) Warner batted really well, (and so did) Yuvraj (Singh) and Shikhar Dhawan and especially Ben Cutting – these four guys put up a total of more than 200 runs which was the most important thing.”

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SRH had defeated Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in the Eliminator and Gujarat Lions (GL) in the Qualifier 2 to reach the finals. Speaking about winning all the three knockout matches (including final) Muttiah said, “It is all about giving confidence to the boys and (asking them to) play (to the best of their abilities). The (message was) the result can be anything, but you do your job. They have to be calm and very sensible; so they played the game the way they wanted to play, and the end result was a win.”

He was also really excited after winning the first trophy as a coach – “It feels fantastic because as a player I have won many trophies, but as a coach (this is the) first time. It’s a wonderful feeling because winning the IPL is a great thing. It’s a good experience for the young boys. Also, it’s good for our franchise because it is the first time we are winning as a new franchise. It is great for everybody,” Murali signed-off.