Rajasthan Royals batter Shimron Hetymer was delighted after playing a match-winning knock against defending champions Gujarat Titans at the Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad on Sunday. Hetmyer scored an unbeaten knock of 56 runs from 26 balls to help his team chase down 178 against the reigning champions.
The left-hander from Guyana smashed five fours and two maximums in his fine knock. In fact, Hetymer had joined forces with Sanju Samson when RR was tottering at 55-4 after 10.3 and the target of 178 runs looked afar from there.
However, Hetmyer and Samson added 59 runs in quick time before the southpaw added the finishing touches. Dhruv Jurel and Ravichandran Ashwin also played crucial cameos of 18 and 10 runs respectively to help their team get close to the target.
Hetmyer revealed that he programs his mind for difficult situations and he was able to keep his calm in the end. In fact, GT had beaten RR thrice in the previous season and Hetmyer feels this win was a sort of a revenge.
Shimron Hetmyer said after he was awarded Player of the Match, “I don’t have any words. Difficult to win against these guys, they beat us thrice last year but today was sort of revenge. I practise these situations, it helps when you practice with that mindset of knowing we are few wickets down and chasing 100 with 8 overs to go. (On Noor Ahmad bowling the final over) I was actually pretty happy to be honest, he bowled well throughout so the first ball all I was thinking about was getting that double and take it from there.”
On the other hand, RR’s batter Devdutt Padikkal showered praise on Shimron Hetmyer for playing a match-winning for the team.
Padikkal said, “It got a little tense in the end, especially when the match went down to the wire, but we had the batter out there who could finish it off. We had to keep the scoreboard ticking, and we made sure to get that odd-boundary. It was moving around a but in the first few overs, but thankfully we got through those overs. It’s unbelievable how he (Hetmyer) does such things, such a great talent to have in our side.”
Apart from Hetmyer, Sanju Samson also scored a crucial knock of 60 runs for the team. Rajasthan Royals will next face Lucknow Super Giants at the Sawai Man Singh Stadium, Jaipur on Wednesday.
