Ram Mehar Singh: Today’s win was a big one

Patna Pirates defeated Bengal Warriors convincingly at the Dome@NSCI SVP Stadium in Mumbai on Saturday. Representing Patna Pirates at the post-match press conference were captain Pardeep Narwal and coach Ram Mehar Singh. Taking questions for Bengal Warriors were captain Surjeet Singh and coach Jagdish Kumble.

Patna Pirates

Q: Do you think all your strategies paid off today?

Ram Mehar Singh: Today our defence performed very well. Whenever a team’s defence works along with their offence, it usually turns out to be a one-sided match. If your raiders don’t work, it will usually be a close match. Today, both our departments worked very well and hence the huge scoreline.

Q: What do you have to say about your raiders?

Ram Mehar Singh: We are usually dependent on Pardeep Narwal to get raid points for us in every situation. He wasn’t able to perform in a few matches this season and then got injured, so his morale got upset. Both of Bengal Warriors’ Corners were new so the plan was to mostly play on Do-or-Die raids and attack their Corners. This is something Deepak Narwal is good at. We always expect a Super 10 from Pardeep and he got one today as well even though he was returning from injury.

Q: How important is this big win given it makes a huge difference to your score difference?

Ram Mehar Singh: It was a big win, moving us to second on the table. We lost to Bengaluru Bulls in the last minute as well as to U Mumba. Those matches were winning opportunities for us which we couldn’t convert. So this feels good.

Bengal Warriors

Q: Do you think you missed a third raider today?

Jagdish Kumble: I think that was the case. We didn’t do badly in the first half. There’s always hope that your raiders will score points. Pardeep Narwal didn’t score many points in the first half but Deepak Narwal’s performance hurt us. We wanted to slow the game down when we were raiding but we couldn’t manage to do that. That’s where we lost the game today.

Q: You conceded a lot of bonus points. What do you have to say about that?  

Surjeet Singh: Initially our defence was exchanging points with their defence. The pace of the game then became fast and we went on the backfoot. Had we slowed the pace of the game, giving our raiders chances to score more points, then maybe we would have had a different result.