Photo: AFP
New Delhi: Rising Pune Supergiant will lock horns with Mumbai Indians in the finals of the Indian Premier League on Sunday at the Rajiv Gandhi cricket stadium in Hyderabad.
The Steve Smith led side finished second on the points table in the group stage and managed to stun top side Mumbai Indians in the Qualifier 1 to enter their maiden IPL finals.
MS Dhoni played a vital role during their win against Mumbai, the former skipper smashed 41 off 25 deliveries to take Pune to a decent total of 161 runs. Dhoni alongside Manoj Tiwary smashed 41 runs in last 2 overs to give glimpses of his vintage self.
While, the World Cup winning captain received praises from all horizons for his on-field antics on the field. However, that did not stop RPS owner Sanjeev Goenka from drawing a comparison between Dhoni and Steve Smith
“MS is one of the greatest minds I have interacted with. And he is the best wicketkeeper in the world. The one mind ahead of Dhoni’s is Smith’s. My brief to Smith was: ‘win the championship’. The first season was a disaster and I wanted it to end soonest, with our dignity intact,” Goenka said in an interview with the Hindustan Times.
“You need to win eight-nine games to make the playoffs and Smith told me that between him, (Imran) Tahir and (Ben) Stokes, we would win seven. And players of the calibre of MS will always give you something. We had more match winners this time, players who would need five-six balls to settle down instead of 20. And we hadn’t factored in Rahul Tripathi, Washington Sundar and Jaydev Unadkat. Tripathi and Sundar are going to be serious players on the Indian cricket scene,” he added
After a shaky start to their IPL 10 campaign, Pune won last 8 of their 10 games to finish in top 2.
Rising Pune Supergiant finished 7th in the Indian Premier League’s ninth edition as they could only manage 10 points in 14 games. This forced the RPS management to sack legendary Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni with Australia’s Steve Smith.