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My blood pressure went over the roof: Coulter Nile

Sat 18 Apr 2015, 12:00 am

My blood pressure went over the roof: Coulter Nile
Summary

Nathan Coulter-Nile speaks about the tense last-over thriller against Sunrisers Hyderabad

The atmosphere at the ACA-VDCA stadium in Visakhapatnam had reached fever pitch. Vizag braced itself for yet another last over thriller with their home team requiring 10 runs off the final over. Ashish Reddy and Karn Sharma were at the crease and Nathan Coulter-Nile had been vested the responsibility of bowling the pressure cooker final over. Ask Coulter-Nile to give a recap of the final over and he speaks about the heart-racing and his blood pressure hitting the roof. To his relief and joy, Coulter-Nile was successful in defending the target and in the process handing the Daredevils their second consecutive win. Here’s the man who was under immense pressure, Daredevils’ man of the moment, taking us through the intense final over in a tete-a-tete with iplt20.com. Has your heart started beating normally after that intense finish? We’ve got into a bit of a habit to take games till the last over, haven’t we? (Laughs). Taking the games till the last over is fantastic for the crowd and TV but it is not good for my heart. My blood pressure has gone over the roof. But you love winning games like that. I am pretty happy to get that one in the bag. Do these last over wins have a different joy altogether? Absolutely! It was a nerve wracking game but I guess that’s what you play the game for. You play for situations like that. You don’t get to experience something of that sort anywhere in the world. Nervous energy, anticipation, the crowd is loud and it is for reasons like these that I love this game. It is a kind of high that only cricket can give you, isn’t it? It is fantastic. I don’t know how to describe it. You have to be out there to feel it. It is a kind of experience that cricketers are lucky enough to experience and all the other athletes in this line of work get to experience which the crowd doesn’t. I guess that is the reason why they come to the ground; to try and get the feel of the energy. How prepared were you to bowl that final over? How did you plan out that over? At the strategic timeout we organized what we were going to do and who was going to bowl. So I was pretty prepared in terms of getting my fields right and who was going to be inside the circle and things like that. Luckily JP Duminy bowled a fantastic 17th over to pick up two big wickets which made my job easier. The first couple of balls I was trying to hit the block hole and get the yorker right and see what the batsman wanted to do. He actually played a really good shot down to third man and we were lucky that it found the fielder. In the balls to follow, I just played on and kept my options open. It turned out that I bowled six full balls which worked in the end. But your heart would have been in your mouth in the penultimate delivery, isn’t it? That ball was headed over the boundary. I thought that one would go for a six and there would be a lot more pressure on the last ball. But it was a fantastic save by Mayank Agarwal. He saved me there. Obviously five to win of the last ball is better than having to get one. Even the last ball, the moment it was hit, it didn’t sound great off the bat but with small grounds in India you never know. I had a quick turnaround to have a look. Angelo Mathews took a good catch and I was lucky enough to get another wicket. Have you got a chance of late to work on your death bowling skills? Not at all. Coming into the IPL back from Australia, I have been playing a lot of red ball cricket. It was good to get a little bit of practice at the death tonight which is the best kind of practice you can get. Match practice always counts. Two wins on a row, do you think Delhi Daredevils’ campaign finally looks to be on track? I don’t know if it is back on track, but two wins is obviously better than four losses. I think we are heading in the right direction. We’ve got a really good group and have a good balance in our batting and bowling. I don’t see any team we can’t beat or contest with. We are lucky enough to have a good bunch of people who know their game quite well. No one has to really be told what to do. People know their roles well and it has been communicated well by Gary Kirsten and it is about going there and doing it.