'It is to be yourself and not lose your individuality while around the big players... just be natural.'
Lucknow Super Giants' batting sensation Ayush Badoni revealed that the plan was to avoid taking risks against Dwayne Bravo during his team's huge chase of 211 against Chennai Super Kings at the Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai on Thursday.
Set an imposing target, Badoni (19 off 9 balls) played his role to perfection in the company of Evin Lewis (55 off 23) to power Lucknow to a six-wicket win, after the foundation was laid by Quinton de Kock's 61 and skipper KL Rahul's 40.
"I know my role and I was only told to play my natural game. They knew that if Evin and I click with our shots then we can win. So there was no specific message, we just had to play our shots and we executed it well," Badoni said after the match.
Veteran all-rounder Bravo, who became the league's highest wicket-taker with 171 scalps when he dismissed the dangerous Deepak Hooda in the 18th over, had bowled his quota of four overs by the time Lucknow needed 34 from the last 12 balls.
With the spinners finding it extremely difficult to grip the wet ball owing to heavy dew, the ball was handed to Shivam Dube in the 19th over, which proved to be a match-turning one as the duo of Lewis and Badoni smashed his medium pace bowling for 25 runs to bring the equation down to nine runs from the last over.
"We didn't want to take risks when Bravo was bowling, but we had to go for our shots in the last two overs, we had to go all out as we needed around 28 runs (34)."
The ploy worked for Lucknow as they completed the huge run chase with three balls to spare.
"I guess 210 was a good score and I think we chased it pretty well," Badoni said.
Asked about the best learning from IPL 2022 so far, he said: "It is to be yourself and not lose your individuality while around the big players... just be natural."
The 22-year-old entered the game against CSK after scoring an impressive 54 off 41 balls in Lucknow's opener against Gujarat Titans.
