Watson thanks CSK for trusting him

Shane Watson couldn't thank Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Stephen Fleming enough after ending his prolonged slump in form.

He had gone without a fifty in his first 10 innings of the ongoing Indian Premier League before striking 96 off 53 balls on Tuesday night to guide Chennai Super Kings to a win over Sunrisers Hyderabad.

"I can't thank Stephen Fleming and MS Dhoni enough for their belief in me. Just about every other team I've been in... for me to miss out on not scoring runs for long as I had throughout the tournament, if I had been in a previous team I would have been dropped a long time ago," Watson said.

Thanks to Watson's knock, CSK chased down a target of 176 with six wickets to spare.

"... So, for Stephen Fleming and MS Dhoni, in particular, to keep the faith in me and knowing that I had a really good innings in me it was great," the 37-year old Watson told reporters.

"For me personally, knowing that I had come off from the PSL and coming into this I was flying high and then things didn't go my way. I lost a bit of rhythm in my batting.

"In the end, you need a bit of luck going your way as well. Bhuvi worked me over in the first couple of overs in particular and you need to be lucky like that," he added.

The strongly built batsman, who hammered leg-spinner Rashid Khan for quite a few runs, said the Afghan is one of the best in this format.

The Australian was effusive in his praise of compatriot and SRH opener David Warner, who has been in tremendous form this IPL.

"I really don't sort of remember for the last four-five years a tournament where Warner hasn't scored a hell lot of runs. He's a world-class player.

World class

"It's very sad the events that happened which made him miss 12 months of international cricket but Australia are going to be very lucky to have him coming back into the team because he's a match-winner and a world-class batsman," Watson added.

SRH all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan praised Watson's batting which took the game away from his team.

"With the power that he's got, he can easily clear boundaries. Even his miss-hits go for six. We knew the danger he can produce against us. So the plan was to get him out but we couldn't do that. And once he was set, he just took the bowlers on," Shakib said.