While there is a lot of pressure on the players to perform in every single game of the IPL, there seems to be a whole lot of pressure on the coaching staff as well and it was on display yesterday when Sri Lankan legend and one of the consultants of Sunrisers Hyderabad, Muttiah Muralitharan, lost his cool during the last over of the game when SRH were defending 22 runs.
With 22 runs required off the last over of the game, SRH went into the over as favorites considering the fact that the over had to be bowled by one of their main bowlers Marco Jansen who had won the player of the match award in only the previous game.
But, as the first ball of the over went for a six over midwicket, the pressure just shifted towards the bowling team from the batting team. There was not much damage off the second ball as the batsman Rahul Tewatia could only take a single, but then three out of the next 4 balls went for six and SRH, shockingly, lost the game.
Muttiah Muralitharan, who has been with SRH for quite sometime now and is one of their chief strategic consultants, just could not understand the gameplan of Marco Jansen in the last over of the game and he was furious about the lengths that Jansen was bowling.
Muttiah Muralitharan didn’t want Marco Jansen to bowl a fuller length
Muralitharan didn’t want Jansen to bowl full to the Gujarat Titans batsman Rashid Khan because it was proving to be easy for Rashid to get under the fuller balls and loft them to different areas of the ground with his strong bottom hand.
What Muttiah Muralitharan wanted was Jansen to bowl back of length into the pitch to Rashid Khan and Jansen did exactly that off the last ball of the innings, but even that went for six as Rashid hooked it over the fine leg boundary and dragged the Titans to an unlikely win.
Here is the video of a furious Muttiah Muralitharan during the last over of the game. The video is going viral on Twitter –
— Thala ⚒️🔔 (@SattiPreetham) April 27, 2022