Bengaluru: Making his Royal Challengers Bangalore debut on Tuesday night, Shane Watson praised his new team-mates — AB de Villiers and Virat Kohli — for their destructive show at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium.
The duo’s match-winning innings that helped RCB begin their IPL-9 season on a winning note, all-rounder Watson was mesmerized watching de Villiers and Kohli smashing SRH bowlers around the park. “What we saw tonight is AB is as good as a batter you’ll ever see. It’s a pleasure to be able to watch him and now to be able to play with him as well.
The control that both of them had, Virat took a while to get his innings really going. He played some great shots but once he gets going and gets couple of boundaries, the array of shots he can play, it’s a privilege to be able to watch it,” stated the all-rounder Watson.
Walking in at No. 4 on his debut, Watson slogged swept Karn Sharma for a hat-trick of sixes to open his RCB account and later got the crucial wicket of David Warner. “I’m happy to fit in where ever I can and hopefully contribute whenever I can,” said the Aussie.
Watson also praised teenager Sarfaraz Khan for his late fireworks that sent SRH bowlers on a leather hunt. “The control he has on where the ball goes is something I’ve never seen before. The way he picks where the bowler is going to bowl the ball and the execution shows that he has practiced a hell a lot,” asserted Watson.
Meanwhile, rival skipper Warner rued after spearhead Ashish Nehra injured his groin during the midway that changed the course of the game. “When you look at the outcome of the game, it really hurts when the bowler goes down. You have to reassess you plans and when two batsmen are going hard here, it’s very difficult to stop them,” explained Warner.
Warner made a quick fifty but lost wickets at regular intervals during the chase of the huge target. “We lost wickets in clumps. We started well and then I got out in the last over and that put the pressure on the guys coming in. It’s hard for a batsman to come in a think how hard should we go when the asking rate is 12 runs per over,” he concluded.
