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Mumbai Indians, who were put into bat by Sunrisers, were struggling at one stage before Pollard's magnificent 26-ball 46 took Mumbai to 136-7 in 20 overs.
During the chase, Sunrisers' devasting opening pair of David Warner and Jonny Bairstow failed to fire. Alzarri Joseph started his IPL career by picking up the wicket of Warner in a wicket maiden.
In the next 2.4 overs bowled by him, he dismissed Vijay Shankar, Deepak Hooda, Rashid Khan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, and Siddarth Kaul. By recording the bowling figures of 6-12, he broke Sohail Tanvir record for the best bowling figures set in 2008 IPL season.
Here's how the world reacted to Alzarri Joseph's incredible feat:
Alzarri Joseph (Man of the Match): It is a dream. I could not have asked for a better start. I just backed my plans and it worked. My plan was to keep it simple and back myself. I know we had a game to win and I was focused on that (on why he didn't celebrate Warner's wicket). The boys are playing well and putting in a lot of hard work. The coaches are also helping us with their inputs.
Rohit Sharma (Mumbai Indians captain): Yes, very pleased. Winning the game is obviously a great result. I thought 136 wasn't a great batting effort, but we bowled in the right areas, kept them guessing all the time and held our nerves. We were in the game till the last ball which is what we spoke of. It was a sensational bowling effort from Alzarri, to bowl like this in first game. He's come in on a lot of confidence from the CPL and he's carrying it here. We didn't bat well to start with, kept losing wickets and we knew after a few overs was that it wasn't a 170-180 pitch. The pitch was under covers for a day, it was raining as well and the wicket was a bit sticky. So we knew that 140 would be a good score to defend because we've got the quality in our bowling and we back them to defend whatever we get. The bulk of the runs were scored by the top-order, but it's not that their middle order wasn't good and we wanted to exploit that. We knew that once we got an early wicket we were in the game and with the spin and the seamers we have, we knew we could knock them out in the middle. We want to win as many games as possible at the start because we know how hectic it gets in the end. A few of the guys leaving for the WC doesn't help either. To start the tournament is important and the last two games show the quality we have in our squad. Again, we needed characters to step up - Pollard came in and played that knock towards the end which was very crucial in contributing to the total. All the bowlers then stepped in and contributed with Alzarri.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Sunrisers captain: I think it started off when we dropped Pollard, he scored 25-30 runs - it is a huge margin. It could have been an easy chase if we would have applied ourselves. When you drop catches it is never easy. There is less margin for error but you need to grab your chances to restrict any team to under 120. First three matches we got good opening partnerships but we never got a chance to test our middle order. Today when we did we did not apply ourselves. We will see what went wrong before going into the next match. It was not a normal flat wicket that we get in Hyderabad but it was not a tough chase.
Virender Sehwag:
Harsha Bhogle:
Mohammad Kaif:
Sanjay Manjrekar:
Irfan Pathan:
Carlos Brathwaite:
RP Singh:
Micheal Vaughan:
Anjum Chopra:
Ayaz Menon:
Gaurav Kapur:
Chetan Narula:
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