“It was good toss to win. We wanted to bowl first because there was a bit of grass and the first hour always help seamers”, said Vinay after the match. “We knew our strengths as we had performed well last year too and so we went in with three seamers. All three of us, me, Mithun and Arvind bowled well. Mithun was exceptional, but very unlucky not to get wickets. But in the end he kept the batsmen guessing and we managed to get them all out”, he said.
Captaincy, he maintained, didn’t weigh him down. “When I bowl, I always think of myself as a bowler. I do not think of captaincy. Because I could be putting more pressure on myself. It is only when others are bowling I would like to think of the captaincy part and things that need to be done. I just bowled in the right areas and it paid off.”
The lack of wickets from Mithun, Vinay said, didn’t put any pressure on him. “Not really, we knew we had to keep a tight line and length. We knew we could get them out if we bowled to our field and it was always going to be difficult for them to force us,” he noted. Vinay paid handsome tribute to his fellow paceman Arvind, who claimed four wickets. “He hardly gets his due,” he remarked of the lanky left-armer.
“He bowled very well. Especially when the wicket had eased out in the afternoon, he got the ball to swing and with some sensible bowling he got us the crucial wickets of Yuvi (Yuvraj), Uday (Kaul) and Vishwas Bhalla. Even in the end he was spot on to claim the last wicket”.