JOIN USRobin Uthappa marked his return to competitive cricket with a typically stroke-filled innings but the manner of his dismissal soon after reaching his century left him disappointed.
“Absolutely not,” he said when asked if he was right in stepping out to Ali Murtuza and leaving himself vulnerable to be stumped.
“I thought I let the team down in a big way by playing that shot. Even though I scored 100, we were only 135/3 at that point. I shouldn’t have played that shot but I think it’s a good lesson for me. But I am glad to look at the position we are in now given how we were placed at one stage. We finished on a positive note,” he remarked at the end of opening day’s play.
Talking about his somewhat ‘subdued’ approach to batting, Uthappa said: “When you are 15 for three, you don’t really have the freedom to play aggressively. In a way, I thought it was good for me to play with a little circumspect and approach the game with caution. And I think that helped me and in turn the team. I knew that I needed to rotate the strike because we didn’t want the runs to be dried up.”
While disclosing that even Karnataka would have opted to bowl first, Uthappa spoke of his strategy on a pitch he understands like the back of his hand.
“I know KSCA to be a little bit challenging for the opening batsmen, the first session of the first day. I understood that if I could just hang in there and building partnership with anyone would be the right thing to do.
“Karun is in good form and we just decided to hang in there.
“We didn’t talk about taking singles or scoring boundaries, we just decided to play on the merit of the ball. The wicket got a bit easier to bat later on as the initial dew was taken off. And once we got in ourselves, we just needed to wait for the bad balls,” he explained.