‘Had a chat with Virat bhai and everyone was there to support me’: Ishan Kishan on finding his lost form

It was absolute carnage as Mumbai Indians (MI) defeated Rajasthan Royals by eight wickets and 70 balls to spare at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium in Sharjah.

While the trio of Jimmy Neesham, Nathan Coulter-Nile and Jasprit Bumrah picked 9 for 40 in 12 overs, batter Ishan Kishan’s half-century helped MI to achieve the target quickly – in 8.2 overs.

Soon after the win, when Ishan was asked about the game Kishan said it was good to play according to the plan. “It’s nice to be back opening and getting runs for the team and helping win by a big margin. Feeling really good was much needed for our team to get momentum. It was good to field first, got a good idea of the surface. Our plan was to play as straight as possible. Just play in the V was the plan and the batsmen executed really well”.

However, when he was asked about the talks around his form, the opening batsman said his talk with Indian skipper Virat Kohli had helped a lot.

“I feel ups and downs are a big part of any sportsman. I was also not in good shape. Most of the batters were not getting runs like in previous seasons. We had great support staff. Our captain… In fact, I had a chat with Virat bhai, Hardik bhai.. everyone was there to support me. I had a chat with KP (Pollard) who said you just need to keep things simple, bat the way you used to do, just watch the videos of what you did in the last season”.

Talking about his batting, Kishan added, “I watched a few videos of my batting and that gave me a bit of confidence”.

While Mumbai will need to win their next game, they will need to rely on the game of Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) performance.

“There is talk of us wanting KKR to lose the next game and us winning our next game (smiles), but that is way ahead now. We just have to prepare for our next game. Need to play with the same energy today. Looking forward to doing this again in the next game”.