Hope to maintain ‘away’ momentum: de Villiers

Royal Challengers Bangalore won away from home for the first time in the Pepsi Indian Premier League 2013, beating Pune Warriors India by 17 runs at the Subrata Roy Sahara Stadium on Friday (May 3). AB de Villiers, who scored an unbeaten 23-ball 50 to help Bangalore cross the line, said two more wins would assure Bangalore of a place in the knockouts.

“We’ve been playing really good cricket, and have been unlucky not to win away games so far,” said de Villiers. “It’s good for us to get off the mark with a win. Hopefully we can maintain that momentum in Mohali in our next game and so forth. We need one or two more wins to secure that spot in the knockout rounds, which will be great for us. We’ll make sure we’ll arrive at the next game and put as much pressure as possible against Kings XI.”
Bangalore put up 187 for 3, courtesy of some innovative batting from de Villiers in the death overs. He hammered Ashok Dinda in the final over for 26 runs, and displayed some typically unorthodox shots. “He (Dinda) is a good bowler, he bowls really good yorkers,” said de Villiers. “I had to do something different, and that’s why I played the left shots. I knew if I tried to hit him out of the ground, he would get his yorkers right. So I tried to read his mind, play him from the first ball and put the pressure on him. And then he had to change his game plan.”
However, Robin Uthappa, one of Pune’s few bright spots on the day with a 45-ball 75, believed Dinda would bounce back. “In the IPL this year, the teams are scoring about 50-60 runs in the last five overs,” said Uthappa. “Dinda’s one of those better bowlers who bowls well in the death. Unfortunately for him, it hasn’t come off this season, probably because his confidence has been dented after being hit a couple of times. But he has a lot of character and will come back strong.”
Uthappa was glad with his own form, though. “I’ve got a lot of starts this season,” he said. “This is a wicket where you can’t play with a lot of freedom. You have to really work for your runs and spend time and adapt to the pace of the wicket constantly. It’s not like you are set at any time, you need to be there and estimate how it is going to play and then take a chance. I’ve been situations where I’ve got in, got settled and got out couple of times this season. Today I’m glad I was able to play the role of an anchor because I’ve been working on it the whole season.”