Rajasthan Royals’ star England all-rounder Ben Stokes is hoping that his swashbuckling return to form with a hundred would not just rejuvenate his side but also give some happiness to his family as it copes with his father Ged’s battle with brain cancer.<\/p>\n
Rajasthan rode on a blistering 107 by Stokes and an equally aggressive 54 by Sanju Samson to overhaul a 196-run target set by defending champions Mumbai Indians with 10 balls to spare on Sunday. The duo forged an unbeaten 152-run stand for the second wicket.<\/p>\n
“It’s a bit difficult at the moment, things are a bit tough back at home, hopefully, this will give them some happiness,” Stokes told official broadcaster ‘Star Sports’ in the post-match presentation.<\/p>\n
Stokes, who missed the early part of the tournament to be with his father in New Zealand, said he was relieved to finally come to the party after a sluggish start in the opening role.<\/p>\n
“Sort of bittersweet to be honest – it took so long to get one for the team. I would have preferred to get this form two or three games before when we weren’t relying on other results to get us through to the qualifiers,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Came into the game with a lot more confidence than the other games. Nice to spend some time out in the middle and finish the game off. The ball was coming on nicely – be it short or full.”<\/p>\n
Rajasthan Royals skipper Steve Smith described the partnership between Stokes and Samson as “sensational” and said the eight-wicket win was just the kind of result they needed to get their IPL campaign back on track.<\/p>\n
“Very pleased, that’s what we were crying for, two of our experienced players take the game deep and the way I think those two (Stokes and Samson) finished it off today and played was sensational, so very pleased,” Smith said.<\/p>\n
“I thought that partnership with him (Stokes) and Sanju was sensational,” added the Australian.<\/p>\n
Smith said that his team was lacking match-winning contributions from experienced players, which it finally got against Mumbai.<\/p>\n
“I hope our batters from tonight take a bit of confidence and momentum into the next game.<\/p>\n
“That is what we have lacked, our experienced players going on to make match-winning contributions and getting the team close to home or home, as they did tonight, so I thought the guys did a fantastic job and hopefully we can take that into the next two games,” he said.<\/p>\n
Losing skipper Kieron Pollard conceded that Mumbai were unable to contain the destructive duo of Stokes and Samson.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes in life you have to do that (say well played to the opposition). They batted fantastically well. But 195\/5 at half-time, I thought Hardik brought us back into the game, but well played to Stokes and Samson,” said Pollard.<\/p>\n
“We got a couple of early wickets but were not able to capitalise on that. When you play a game of cricket, someone has to win and someone has to lose and we ended on the losing side this time around,” added the West Indian.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rajasthan Royals’ star England all-rounder Ben Stokes is hoping that his swashbuckling return to form with a hundred would not just rejuvenate his side but also give some happiness to his family as it copes with his father Ged’s battle with brain cancer. Rajasthan rode on a blistering 107 by Stokes and an equally aggressive 54 by Sanju Samson to overhaul a 196-run target set by defending champions Mumbai Indians with 10 balls to spare on Sunday. The duo forged an unbeaten 152-run stand for the second wicket. “It’s a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28419,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28418"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28420,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28418\/revisions\/28420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}