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Ravi Bishnoi sent down nine dot balls in his three overs, dismissing Rahul Tripathi and Ravindra Jadeja in the ninth and 13th overs respectively.
Ravi Bishnoi has taken eight wickets from seven games so far this IPL. (PTI Photo)
Ravi Bishnoi was the standout bowler for Lucknow Super Giants in their five-wicket defeat to Chennai Super Kings. Despite that, the young legspinner didn’t get to bowl a fourth over and finished with bowling figures of 2/18 from three overs. With CSK chasing 167 to win at the Ekana Cricket Stadium, LSG captain Rishabh Pant put his faith in fast bowlers instead of a spinner.
CSK needed 56 off the last five overs and went on to achieve the target with three deliveries to spare. With Pant’s decision backfiring, it did raise eyebrows why the wicketkeeper-batter didn’t use Bishnoi whose three-over spell included nine dot balls.
However, Bishnoi has thrown his weight behind Pant’s decision even though he doesn’t know the reason why he wasn’t called to bowl in the death overs.
“I didn’t really talk (to Pant) about it. I came to the wicket twice, but maybe he had some plans in mind. He probably wanted to execute something else…,” Bishnoi said during the post-match press conference.
“A captain can see better and from behind the stumps, he can understand the situation better. So according to me, he took the decision that he felt was better.
“No, nothing like that [talk about the fourth over]. It was clear in his mind [what he had to do]. In a tense situation, it is better for a captain to think from his point of view, so he took what was the better decision,” he added.
Bishnoi had gotten rid of Rahul Tripathi (9th over) and Ravindra Jadeja (13th over). While he didn’t get to complete his quota, the lesser experienced Digvesh Rathi and part-timer Aiden Markram did bowl four overs each.
“There was a lot of time when I thought about bowling him [Bishnoi] that [fourth] over,” Pant said explaining his decusion. “But we discussed with a lot of players and just couldn’t let him bowl. We thought let’s take it deeper, and that didn’t happen for us today.”
