By IANS,
New Delhi : As rain played spoilsport, Mahela Jayawardene who led Kings XI Punjab’s charge against Delhi Daredevils here Saturday night said his team very much had the Duckworth-Lewis charts on their minds.
“We knew we had to be ahead of Dardevils if rain came again and the Duckworth-Lewis method comes into play. When I came to the crease we had lost three wickets and we were around 30 runs short that time. We needed one good over,” said the Sri Lankan.
“When (Virender) Sehwag came to bowl it was the best option… We had to take our chances and it paid off. After that we kept on taking around six runs per over,” said Jayawerdene, who along with Luke Pomersbach (25) blasted 63 off 27 balls and Kings XI found themselves ahead by six runs in the D/L charts when rain again stopped play after eight overs.
The two took 22 runs off Sehwag’s only over.
“There was no point to continue playing in rain. My bat was all wet and I told the umpire that it is getting difficult.”
Losing skipper Sehwag conceded he made an error in bowling that over.
“That was a costly over. But I thought the match could go on till the last over and I saved Glen McGrtah for the crucial time. I had to bowl somewhere so I took a chance. That over of mine proved very costly,” Sehwag said.
He said his team had a good chance if rain had not cut short their batting.
“We were batting well when rain came. We could have crossed 200 had it been a 20 overs game and that would have been a difficult score for them.”
Kings XI captain Yuvraj Singh said their fielding was shoddy but Jayawardene and Pomersbach saved the day for them.
“Our fielding was very bad and too many catches were dropped. I drooped Sehwag and that could have hurt more had it been a 20-over match,” he said.
“But thanks to Mahle and Luke, they kept us ahead in the run chase.”