Vinay credits success to self-belief

Karnataka have remained unbeaten for 27 matches since late 2012, and skipper R Vinay Kumar attributed his team’s stupendous run to self-belief.

“I think it is the self-belief, most of them have played five-six years of domestic cricket. They know exactly what kind of effort they have to put, fitness, mind-set etc. Everyone wants to achieve big that’s the plus point that we have,” said Vinay on Saturday.

Wicketkeeper and vice-captain CM Gautam was initially ruled out of the final with a hamstring niggle, but on Friday he was drafted in as the 16th member of the side. Vinay clarified the situation. “It is fifty-fifty, tomorrow morning we will take a call. If he is not hundred percent then definitely we will not play him,” said Vinay.

The top-order batting has been a bit of worry for Karnataka this season, but Vinay was not perturbed. “We are not thinking about the negatives and everyone knows that every time top six batsmen can’t perform. Two-three batsmen have to perform and whoever performs they need to perform big. Hopefully, it will come good this time too.”

Vinay also hoped the three-pronged pace attack of Karnataka would deliver once again. “We have played for many years together and we know what we have to do as a team, and that’s why we have more than 100 wickets between us.”  There was a time in the league phase when Tamil Nadu’s chances of advancing to knockouts looked bleak. The former champions turned around their fortunes quite dramatically and TN skipper Abhinav Mukund said the win over Uttar Pradesh was the turning point.

“Lot of people have not given us credit to the fact that we have played on turning tracks and it takes some skill to beat two quality teams and get seven points from those games. I think the turnaround was the match against Uttar Pradesh. We got some belief from that win, and then a couple of youngsters came in and turned it around for us. When we went to Baroda couple of our fast bowlers did really well for us. From that win we got the belief that we can do really well even on good tracks. So, I think overall the UP game was the turnaround.”