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Sitting in his hotel room, Powell tried to convince his captain that he had the game to hit the spinners too and wanted to be back at No. 5.
“I came to the IPL knowing that I’m in good form, knowing that I’ve done a lot of work,” Powell said later at the post-match press conference. “At the start of the IPL, it was a little bit tough for me. I just keep believing in myself. I had a conversation with Rishabh, explaining to him that I was a little bit disappointed to bat at No. 8 in that game. But it is the nature of the game, whatever the situation you have been placed in, you have to do your best. Rishabh and the coach [Ricky Ponting], they came up with a conclusion and plan and let me bat a little bit earlier now.”
“I just told him [Pant] to trust me at No. 5, give me a chance to start, to bat the first 15-20 balls, that’s how I want to bat, and then [after] 20 balls I’ll try to maximise”
Rovman Powell
“I don’t mind having one or two conversations here and there,” Pant told Star Sports of his chat with Powell. “In the start, he was not getting enough runs but we knew what he can give us, so we backed him and now he’s coming out with flying colours.”
On Thursday, when Capitals lost their third wicket on 85 in the ninth over, Powell walked out to give a well-set David Warner company. The platform had been laid and the stage was set for Powell. Following his ideal blueprint, he ambled along to 21 off 19 balls, even getting a life in between when Kane Williamson dropped him at mid-off on 18, and then took off. Powell had only hit one boundary until then – a six – but in the next 16 balls, he smashed three fours and five sixes.
He pulled a Bhuvneshwar Kumar bouncer behind square, took back-to-back sixes off Sean Abbott down the ground, smoked a Kartik Tyagi length ball over long-on and then tore into Umran Malik in a final over that went for 19 runs, courtesy a six and three consecutive fours.
“I was trying my best [to hit sixes] but I kind of got winded in the end, so that’s how it goes,” Powell said of how he had to resort to fours instead of sixes in the last over.
“I haven’t really seen him bat a lot in the last couple of years, but once I saw him in the nets for the first couple of training sessions I had with him, he hit the ball a long way,” Watson said. “And without having to really overhit the ball, the ball still travels. That’s the beauty of seeing him come together over the last three games in particular.
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