Waqar told us to bowl like in a Test match - Sammy
With the Mohali pitch sporting a sprinkling of grass he and his team-mates, Darren Sammy said, on the advice of bowling coach Waqar Younis, were just looking to bowl "like in a Test match"
ESPNcricinfo staff
12-May-2013
Darren Sammy, the Sunrisers Hyderabad allrounder, produced one of the top-five bowling figures of IPL 2013 so far, helping his team to a 30-run victory against Kings XI Punjab in Mohali. With the pitch sporting a sprinkling of grass he and his team-mates, Sammy said, on the advice of bowling coach Waqar Younis, were just looking to bowl "like in a Test match".
"On that wicket you don't have to do much. With the grass on the good-length, our bowling coach, Waqar Younis asked us to bowl like we do in a Test match - just put the ball on that one spot and let the pitch do the rest," Sammy told the IPL site. "Later on we took pace off the ball."
Sammy finished with 4 for 22, as Kings XI got to 120 for 9 in response to Sunrisers' 150. He got Shaun Marsh and Adam Gilchrist with his first two deliveries, as both batsmen tried to pull length balls. In his second over, he got batsman in the spotlight, David Miller, with another length ball. Miller was the biggest of the wickets, Sammy said. "All of them have been dangerous at different times in the tournament but David Miller, especially. Our plan was to bowl on good length to him and let him try to have a go at us. Even though he scored a 100 in 38 balls a couple of games back, Saturday he was starting on naught. He made a mistake and we got the result."
Working with Waqar and Dale Steyn at Sunrisers, Sammy said, was proving quite beneficial to his bowling. "There's so much of experience there. The one [biggest] thing I have picked from them is to be clear. Make sure when you're on the top of your mark, you know what ball you're going to bowl - if it's a yorker, slower one, length ball, bouncer, whatever it is. When you start running in, no matter what the batsman does, you know that is the ball that's going to come out of your hand."
On Saturday, that Sunrisers got to a total of 150 came down to stout rearguard resistance in the company of opener Parthiv Patel - who made 61 off 47 - after the team had been reduced to 52 for 5 by the ninth over. Parthiv played a smart knock, Sammy said. "I think it's proven that the anchors are as important in this format as the hitters are. Michael Hussey is not a big hitter but he has the Orange Cap. I think batting in T20 is more about reading the situation of the game and executing your shots properly.
"I thought Parthiv did that really well on Saturday night. He assessed the conditions, analysed the situation and he knew that if he got 50 in the end, we will end up with 140-plus."