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Left-arm pacer Yash Dayal had the perfect redemption arc. He was smashed for five sixes in a row by Kolkata Knight Riders’ (KKR) Rinku Singh. It took him time to recover from the unreal hitting in the last over. Before the auction, he was released by Gujarat Titans (GT). Dayal was roped in for Rs 5 crore by Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB). Many criticised RCB for picking Dayal. Former Indian spinner Murali Karthik even made a derogatory comment about him. However, he made a tremendous comeback. With his slower balls, he outfoxed former Chennai Super Kings (CSK) MS Dhoni, Shardul Thakur and Ravindra Jadeja.
However, Dayal did not start off with the ideal delivery. He bowled a hip-high full toss which was smashed by Dhoni out of the ground. The ball change helped RCB as Dayal was able to grip the ball better and pull off the back of the hand slower balls. In the post-match press conference, he revealed that the senior players trusted him to execute his plan.
“Last time (against KKR), whatever happened to me, there were a lot of nerves. But now ever since I came to the RCB set-up, I’ve been putting in a lot of hard work behind the scenes. And I was able to deliver in the matches as well. And after Dhoni hit the six, I was just thinking about delivering two good deliveries and how to execute my plan. And I didn’t see any of the senior players coming in to offer advice and they were relaxed. It showed that they had the confidence in me. So I was able to execute the plan,” said the 26-year-old.
Dayal followed it up with a slower ball. The 42-year-old went for the big shot but managed just a top-edge. He was caught at the deep square leg by Swapnil Singh.
“After the first ball went for six, subconsciously you start thinking about KKR game. So I stopped looking at the scoreboard and was just thinking about execution. Obviously, with all the noise around, the mind was diverting. But as a player, you look forward to these moments and it is what you train for. Emotions were running high, but in the middle, you have to keep all of it aside and just follow the process that has been working all along. So I was focussing on executing my plan,” he added.
He conceded just one run from the last four balls and helped RCB win by 27 runs. CSK fell short of the qualifying target by just 10 runs. Earlier, he dismissed Daryl Mitchell in the first over.
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