Josh Hazlewood was the spark of the evening for Royal Challengers Bengaluru in a spectacular bowling performance, which earned him the second player of the match award of the season.

Playing for the Royal Challengers in Bengaluru, many players including Jacob Duffy, Tim David, Phil Salt and Virat Kohli have been picked as POTMs in matches. Hazlewood has now picked his second POTM award of the season.

RCB have continued their best form in the competition and have now managed to win six games from their first eight matches in the tournament, with Rajat Patidar continuing the winning streak as captain of the defending champions.

Josh Hazlewood won the POTM award for his incredible figures with the ball

Josh Hazlewood picked two consecutive wickets on consecutive deliveries in his first over with the ball. He first dismissed KL Rahul with a rebound that pounced on him, and Rahul ended up beating him.

Next was a ball that went wide outside the off-stump and Sameer Rizvi didn’t move his foot while bowling his hands. He was on a hat-trick when Tristan Stubbs clipped him for the boundary.

Hazlewood’s next wicket came against Nitish Rana, and he concluded the game with his fourth wicket, dismissing Abhishek Porel with a sublime yorker at mid-stump. Having bowled 3.3 overs, he finished with figures of 4/12 and was awarded the player of the match award.

Josh Hazlewood reveals how the conditions helped him improve his bowling performance

“Yeah, I think, probably coming here after 500-plus runs in the last game, I probably didn’t expect what happened, but yeah, it seems like Bhuvi and I have come very close to producing a really good powerplay. So yeah, I followed suit basically again and, yeah, what happened, happened, so it was a great result,” Josh Hazlewood said.

Talking about the wicket, he revealed that the wicket helped them a little at the start of the overs as the ball moved a little sideways and it was enough for the players to exercise with it.

He added that the shorter length helped him target the wickets of players like KL Rahul and Nitish Rana, whom he surprised with some bouncers. He explained: “And then obviously the short ball was good too.”

“So it was just about the accuracy of the short ball in particular. But I think no matter where you bowled it, it somehow ended up at the right height. It was one of those wickets. So, yeah, I think when that ball was nice and hard, it was pretty tough to bat on.”

Hazlewood’s honest take on team strategy and in-game momentum

Hazlewood revealed that he would have loved to bowl the fourth over in the row and then simply walk off the field; However, Rajat Patidar removed him from the captaincy and introduced the spinners after seamers Romario Shepherd and Rasikh Salam made some runs.

“But no, I think the way we planned it was nice. Our spinners came into the game, you know, they spun it really well. Suyash bowled beautifully again. KP, a wily old character. So, yeah, it feels like every box is being ticked at the moment,” he said.

“Yes, I think we’ve picked up where we left off last year. I felt like, particularly in our away games, we summed up the conditions nice and quickly, whether we were batting or bowling first, and adapted our games accordingly.”

“So we really had a run towards the end of last year, and I think we seem to be hitting our stride now at the right time in the tournament,” Hazlewood summed up the team’s brilliant performance.

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