After the win and the celebrations, Raina spoke to clt20 about his innings and CSK’s win. What a knock! Thank you! It was a very special one. We hadn’t been winning finals in the last three-four years and I was determined to finish it for the team today. Once I got a fifty, I wanted to take it till the end because the ball was spinning. I have faced Piyush (Chawla) quite a bit and I knew exactly how to get runs off him. It was my first time facing Kuldeep (Yadav) but the other bowlers were pretty well known. I had made up my mind that I will remain positive through to the end and see the team home. Most of CSK’s batsmen, including you, are attacking by nature. But given you have played some of the longest innings for the team, do you assume that role in a way? Our batting lineup is filled with hard-hitting batsmen from top to bottom. When you have such firepower, you have to ensure you play your natural game. However, we also have to draw a fine line between sticking to our aggressive game and taking the responsibility to finish games for the team. I try to maintain that balance. Once I am set, I try to stay till the end so the team’s tempo doesn’t go down when a new batsman comes in and takes time to settle down. How does having so many international cricketers around help you? More than anything it helps me become more mature. The more maturity I add to my nature, the better it will be in my career. With the likes of (MS) Dhoni bhai, Stephen Fleming and Baz (Brendon McCullum) around, I get many lessons in calmness and temperament. Was the pressure of a final a little lesser because of the comfort factor of having played most of your league games on this ground? A final is a game where the pressure is the highest, irrespective of the familiarity of the conditions. And when you are chasing 180, you can never relax. It means a lot to all of us – we work very hard together and the players who come from other countries give a lot of themselves to the team. When I look at the big screen with “Champions Super Kings” on it, it makes me very proud. You do specialize in the art of batting long in the shortest format of the game. That is why I love batting at No. 3. When you bat there, your whole game opens up. You have to change gears and plans at different phases of the innings, although it is only 20 overs. Pacing the innings is an important part of batting in the top-order in a T20 game. I have been playing that role for CSK over seven years now and I grown pretty comfortable in it. Talk about Pawan Negi, the new spin option of CSK. Gautam (Gambhir) was batting really well and KKR looked set for a much bigger total. But Negi came in and controlled the game in the middle. In him, CSK have got a very good prospect and I wish he plays a lot of games for India in the coming years. I also want to congratulate Kuldeep Yadav for getting picked in the Indian squad (for the first three ODIs against West Indies). He has grown up playing all his cricket in UP (Uttar Pradesh) where we don’t have such good facilities. Despite that, making it to the Indian team is a big achievement. I am really happy for him and I wish him all the very best.
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 08:48:57 +0000
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