Waiting for it for a long time, says Shepherd

Romario Shepherd, who was the ‘player of the match’, faced all but one of the last 12 legal balls and hammered six sixes and two fours off Khaleel Ahmed and Matheesha Pathirana, on his way to an unbeaten 14-ball 53 including four fours and six sixes

HYDERABAD: Romario Shepherd, who scored a game-changing half-century for Royal Challengers Bengaluru against Chennai Super Kings on Sunday night in Bengaluru in the IPL league match, said he was waiting for it for a long time.

Romario Shepherd, who was the ‘player of the match’, faced all but one of the last 12 legal balls and hammered six sixes and two fours off Khaleel Ahmed and Matheesha Pathirana, on his way to an unbeaten 14-ball 53 including four fours and six sixes.

“I wanted to give the team a good finish. My power comes from my base and the way I swing. Even today, I was just trying to hold my shape and took it from there,” Shepherd informed the host broadcaster after RCB pulled off a thrilling, two-run win against CSK.

“DK (Dinesh Karthik, mentor of RCB) came and gave us some specific work and tonight, it paid off for the team. I was not thinking about the score,” Shepherd said.

“Just taking it ball by ball and I wanted to hit each ball for four or six. Was trying to stay relaxed, hold my base and hit. I try to keep it 50-50 bowling and batting, but did not come off with the ball tonight. Bad day with the ball (for me), but we got over the line with the boys (Dayal, Bhuvneshwar and Ngidi) pulling us out of the mud,” he said with a big smile.

“I am not saying that I was thinking of going there and hitting 53 of 14, but I was just thinking to try and get the momentum back at one stage of the game,” Shepherd said.

“And then Timmy (Tim David) told me just to hold my shape a bit because the ball was creeping in the wicket. So my mindset automatically changed to just base up and, you know, watch the ball as it comes and try and, you know, hit in my areas and don’t try and swing before, swing too early,” he said.

“When I hit the first two, I know I had the ball and the pressure. I saw his body language (Khaleel Ahmed). So I was like, ok, let me try and put you under some more pressure. He was kind of confused when he went over or wrong. So I know I had him,” Shepherd said.

“But, it was a kind of difficult wicket. The spinner had something. We saw our spinner bowl the 17th over, so it had something for the spinners, the way they did the ball and stuff,” he said.

“The way we execute our plan and execute the way the guys execute was difficult to actually capitalise on them. So, the way we bowled the last three overs was brilliant,” Shepherd said.