Dubai: After finishing the league stage of Indian Premier League as the top-ranked team and then the first team to qualify for playoffs, defending champions Mumbai Indians gave another clinical performance on Thursday(November 5) in the Qualifier 1 of the IPL 2020 and book a place in the final.
One of the biggest positives for the four-time defending champions seems to have been youngster Ishan Kishan who is in the spot of 4th leading run-scorers list.
Former Aussie all-rounder Tom Moody feels that after the success of this season, Kishan is a ‘real package’ and one of the most promising keeper batsmen in India currently.
“We’ll start hearing about him for sure. He has been in the shadows and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be under the spotlight now because we’re only seeing the batting that he has to offer,” Moody was quoted as saying on ESPNCricinfo.
“We do know that he can keep as well. He doesn’t need to keep in that Mumbai side so he’s the real package. The other thing is that he can open the batting and also looks comfortable batting in the middle and that’s quite rare for a young player to have that sort of open mind and flexibility.
I did listen to an interview that he did couple of games ago. He was talking about how he was pretty chilled about the fact that opens or bats at 4 or 5, it didn’t matter to him. He was quite happy to play whatever role that was required. That maturity in itself was quite significant,”he added.
Praising Kishan, Moody said, he has been brilliant wherever he has batted for MI this year. He has excelled as an opener.
“I just thought that his was a particularly mature innings. Let’s face it, Mumbai Indians ended up with 200 but the only reason they ended up with that many I think was because of his craftsmanship in the middle of the innings.
They did lose a couple of key wickets, particularly Rohit Sharma at the top and then Pollard went very quickly, but he seemed to steady the ship and be the sort of backbone for the innings without any fuss. He seems to be able to navigate those difficult times quite comfortably. When he hits boundaries, he’s got this unbelievable ability to hit the ball out of the ground.” Moody added.
