Rising Pune Supergiant is finally coming good as a unit. On Monday, they beat Gujarat Lions by five wickets to consolidate their fourth spot in the table, courtesy Ben Stokes’ unbeaten 103.
With 12 points from 10 matches, captain Steve Smith feels that the team is finally showing their pedigree.
“It wasn’t an ideal start but we have some artillery in the shed. MS [Dhoni] and Stokesy [Ben Stokes] took it deep. It is one of the easier ground to his sixes and Stokesy made use of it. I thought it was a great effort for the bowlers to pull it back to 160. We are peaking at the right time, hopefully not early,” said Smith.
“Stoksy is a quality player and he certainly earned his cash. Fantastic player and very proud of him.”
Stokes, who added 76 runs for the fifth wicket with former India captian MS Dhoni, said their plan was to rotate the strike.
“We lost quite a few early wickets... Me and MS just tried to keep it ticking. Numbers game: we just tried to go big at the start of the over and cool it off,” he said.
Lions skipper Suresh Raina rued that not having quality spin attack hurt them in the match.
“The dew was there when Basil and Jimmy were bowling. Credit to Stokes. We did not have much power in the spinning department, but Stokes did well. I would say we were 25-30 runs short. We kept losing wickets and we were all out. Still I think we bowled well in the first six overs. The way Stokes was hitting was the turning point. The way he was hitting, clean strikes,” he said.
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