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‘Winning is more important’

— Photo: AFP

Yuvraj.

Johannesburg: Yuvraj Singh obviously couldn’t stop blushing after registering his second hat-trick of the Indian Premier League, but the Kings XI Punjab skipper said winning the matches means more to him than achieving personal milestones.

Yuvraj, who spun a web around Deccan Chargers on Sunday and set the platform for a thrilling one-run win to keep his team’s semifinal hopes alive, said; “well, the win was very important for us. It was a collective team effort. It was an interesting game.

“The hat-trick is not as important as winning the game. I was happy that I got the second hat-trick of this tournament. It’s unbelievable, but I am very happy with the win,” Yuvraj said.

Not aware

The stylish left-hander, however, said he was not aware of the milestone until he saw it on the giant screen.

“I actually didn’t realise. I didn’t know because Herschelle Gibbs was out off the last ball of one over. So I was thinking I have a hat-trick ball, so I had a slip and a silly point in. Then I bowled a bad ball and I thought I missed my hat-trick, it didn’t matter. Then I read on the screen that I had got a hat-trick,” he was quoted as saying in IPL’s official website.

Yuvraj also felt that slow nature of the wickets here was a reason behind teams losing momentum.

Slow wickets

“The wickets are slow. The ball is gripping and so it is difficult to hit on the rise. The season here has ended, so the wickets have become very slow,” he said. He was of the view that attempting yorkers at the death is a gamble.

“They (yorkers) are a bit of a gamble. Some of them who have bowled so many death overs for years have bit of an experience. Sometimes it clicks, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes a batsman can read what you are doing. Sometimes he doesn’t. It is bit of a gamble. Whoever is the smarter one wins the game.” — PTI

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