For a good 90 minutes on Saturday evening, every corner of the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore reverberated with one word: KOHLI! With his team desperately trying to escape a losing streak and stay alive in VIVO IPL 2016, the Royal Challengers Bangalore captain delivered with a mesmerising innings. Chasing Rising Pune Supergiants’ 191, Virat produced a magnificent 108 off 58 balls to take his team home. Everything that the other 21 players did on the field became a haze in the glow of Virat’s batting.

However, there was one significant contribution that played no small part in RCB’s redemption game after their heartbreaking loss to KKR in their last home game. And that performance came from Shane Watson. The Australian all-rounder was still smarting from his 24-run over to Yusuf Pathan that according to him cost RCB the match. And he promised himself that he would make up for it in what was the perform-or-perish game for his team. Watson kept that promise and how.

In a T20 match were 386 runs were scored, Watson bowled at an economy rate of 6. His 3 for 24 comprised 13 dot balls. And when he went in to bat, he changed the course of the chase with a 13-ball blast for 36 runs. He smashed five fours and two sixes before he left the crease, leaving the run-ball equation in Virat’s grasp.

In a chat with iplt20.com after RCB’s seven-wicket win, Watson lavished praise on his new IPL captain for his phenomenal batting prowess and hoped this could be the start of a long winning run for the team.

A good day for you and the team!

It was a very good day for us, this was an important win. It was about time we got some momentum. We have seen plenty of times in the IPL that if you get some momentum going at the back end of the tournament, anything is possible. Hopefully this is the beginning of a turnaround for us.

RCB really needed this win after being in a bit of a rut lately, didn’t you?

We really needed this win, especially after how we lost the last game against KKR. Personally, I took it very hard for the one over I bowled that got KKR back in the game to be able to win it from there. I was pretty determined to play much better in this game. It worked out nicely as I could contribute with both bat and ball.

Has there been some hard talk in the dressing room after the last game, especially on the bowling front?

There has been plenty of talking for sure. We have talked a lot about different plans, and combinations to make sure we give ourselves the best chance to execute. We had to improve on the bowling front and we continue to work on it. Our fielding did not help us today. We dropped plenty of chances. But in the end, we won.

As a bowler, what mindset do you go in with on a ground and wicket where 200-odd is a norm in a T20 game?

Very defensive. You just try to bowl balls out of the swinging arc of the batsman. That is really simply what my plan is. I executed it much better today than I did against KKR the other day. It is important to know that you have plans when you go into a game and feel it when you are out there. Variations play a key role on such wickets. Yorkers, cutters, slower ones, slower bouncers, bouncers – all these are important weapons. But it is also crucial to know when to bowl them. If the batsman is thinking you will bowl a slower one, you should know not to bowl it. You read the batsman as well as you can and use your variations accordingly.

It was a slower one with which you got MS Dhoni out today.

I was trying to get the ball away from him; bowl wider to him with a bit of change of pace. I have the experience of playing against MS and I know that if a ball lands in his hitting arc, it will travel. So, it is always good to bowl wider to him and chance the pace.

Why is it that teams chasing totals are winning matches in this IPL?

When you are chasing, you know exactly what you have to get, so you can build a platform and map it out a little bit better compared to when you are batting first, when sometimes you don’t know how many are going to be enough.

And it helps when you have a master chaser like Virat Kohli opening the batting for you, doesn’t it?

Virat has to be one of the greatest chasers of all time in any format. It is incredible to see how well and how easily he hits. It seems like he is not taking any risk at all, and he gets 100 off 50 balls to win the game! Having him in our team makes chasing that much easier for us.

It is simply phenomenal to watch him and bat with him. It is amazing how he sums up the situation consistently so well and executes under huge pressure. Today we had to win this game to remain in the tournament. He is the captain of our team and he stood up when it mattered.