Ranji Trophy | Plan was to play positively and target the small boundaries, reveals Manish Pandey

Manish Pandey played a pacy 87 run-innings off only 75 deliveries and along with Karun Nair(61) weaved an unbeaten fifth-wicket partnership of 129 runs which won them the match. Pandey has revealed that it was his gameplan from the start of the innings to just play freely and score as many boundaries as possible.

"Playing at the Chinnaswamy stadium, it's important to be positive. The intent to score runs should be there. From the previous games experience, I thought we were being too defensive. Sometimes it doesn't work, it hasn't worked in the past," Pandey told TNN. 

Rajasthan had scored 224 and 222 runs in its first and second innings of the match respectively. Though Karnataka had made 263 runs in their first innings, they were given a tricky target of 184 runs in the second innings to chase. 

"So, I was clear in my mind to go in and look to score runs, especially boundaries, because the boundaries are really small. They're a little easy to get once you're set. I know the first three boundaries I got were not convincing but after that, we started to see the change - their voices dropped. That was my intention to go there and do the job," the Karnataka skipper added.

Though the target looked tricky Pandey’s blitzy innings of 87 made the target an easy one in the hindsight. Though Karnata lost four wickets in the process of chasing the score they managed to do the job comfortably.

"With a target of 184, I thought one big partnership of 50-70 runs would have done the job for us. As Karun (Nair) and I were batting, after a point it became too easy and we eventually cruised through," the batsman explained.

Pandey also praised his partner in crime Karun Nair for accompanying him in the second innings and stated that a couple of performances do not define a batsman and hence he backed Nair in the match and the latter proved the decision right.

"Before the match, I said a couple of innings doesn't really define a batsman. We back players who are willing to perform and have performed in the past. That's what Karun did, with his experience and hunger to get runs just before the big game - the semifinals. He wanted to bat and spend some time on the wicket and did that beautifully," said Pandey.

Pandey expressed that the 97-run last wicket partnership between R Vinay Kumar and Ronit More in the first innings was as important as any other performance of the game and added that it proved to be a game-changer.

"If I have to rate anything, that partnership and the way Vinay batted was one of the reasons why we won the game quite comfortably. No one really expected that but that's the way Vinay has always played. He has done this quite a few times," Pandey said.