'We have an advantage'

Mumbai Indians coach John Wright said playing two matches at  Feroz Shah Kotla will give his team an advantage over Rajasthan Royals in the Champions League Twenty20 final on Sunday.

Mumbai had played back to back matches at Kotla, where the final would be held as compared to Royals who had maintained an unbeaten streak in the tournament with stellar performances in their home ground in Jaipur.

“Playing back to back matches at Kotla will certainly give us the advantage over the Royals. They have not played here, and we know the conditions here well,” Wright told reporters after his team victory over T&T on Saturday.

He, however, refused to see it as “fitting finale” because of the presence of two great cricketers in Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid in two sides. Wright, however, congratulated Tendulkar for reaching the milestone of finishing 50,000 runs in all formats of the game. 

“We are focussing on the result of tomorrow’s match. We are all thrilled for Sachin. It is an amazing milestone. We hope he would add a few more,” he said.

No injury concerns

Asked whether back-to-back matches could prevent speedy recovery, Wright said: “We have a good back room staff, we have no injury to our players currently. We hope to get fresh for tomorrow’s match.”

Trinidad and Tabogo captain Denesh Ramdin said they missed Rayad Emrits and rued that none of his bowler could lend support to Sunil Narine.

‘We missed Emrits today, unfortunately he was injured. We hoped a few others bowlers would step up. But no one supported Narine. During our team meetings, we had decided one of the top three batsmen will last till 17 overs. But that did not really happen.We were 15 runs short,” Ramdin said.