JOIN USShane Watson, Royal Challengers Bangalore’s biggest acquisition this season at Rs 9.5 crore, made an immediate impact as the Virat Kohli-led side cruised to a 45-run win over Sunrisers Hyderabad in their season opener.
The Australian all-rounder made a quickfire 19 (8b, 3x6) and claimed two wickets, including that of David Warner, to show just why RCB is so gung ho about him. Watson spoke to the media after the match. Excerpts.
On AB de Villiers: Where do I start? (laugh) Look even what we saw tonight, AB is as good a batter as you’ll ever see. It didn’t look like he was taking a risk in his whole innings. One six he hit over cover off the backfoot. It’s an incredibly tough shot to play. It’s a pleasure to be able to watch him and now to be able to play with him as well. Doesn’t look like he’s taking a risk at all, reads the ball really well, executes his shots really well.
On RCB playing their top 4 batsmen in the first four places: In the last season, Chris (Gayle), Virat and AB batting one, two and three gave them some incredible momentum. That batting order gathered a lot of momentum and why would they change that when they’ve had so much success with their top three doing so well. I’m happy to fit in whereever I can and hopefully contribute whenever I can. Just knowing from last year with Rajasthan, seeing those top three guys facing all the ball, you have to take all the wickets otherwise you are in deep trouble and that’s exactly what happened (today).
On team scoring 227 even after Gayle managing just 1 run: The good thing is there are quite a few main batsmen in RCB. It’s not going to be that everyone is going to have their day every single time and that’s an incredible strength that we have at RCB with our batting line-up. We saw AB and Virat bat incredibly well tonight and next game it’s going to be Chris’ turn. Then we’ve got Sarfaraz (Khan), we’ve got Kedar Jadhav as well. The quality of batsmen that we have, I think we are very very fortunate here at RCB.