Chris Morris has said that the bidding war that made him the most expensive IPL buy was a breathtaking experience, not least because of the confidence he derived from knowing just how many teams were willing to have him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all know for you to go for a high price tag, it means that people want you in their team and that your services are quite valued so yeah it gives you quite a lot of confidence,\u201d Morris, who was sold to Rajasthan Royals for INR 16.25 crore in February, said. \u201cI\u2019ll be the first person to say that my breath was taken away. I did not expect, first of all, to be bought for that much and for so many teams to want my services, so yeah it is definitely a humbling feeling. It took my breath away for that to happen, and for teams to keep going for me like that blew my mind. I never in my wildest dreams thought that I\u2019d be playing in my eighth IPL. So for me to still be playing, for me still to be needed, for my services to be valued is very cool, and very humbling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morris, however, knows about the pressing factor his check accompanies. In addition, his wellness will be under the scanner after how he began the keep going season on the seat and could play just nine games for the Royal Challengers Bangalore.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll my preps have been right but the injuries have come at the wrong time. I think last year was a bit of a different one \u2013 there wasn\u2019t any cricket coming into the IPL so there were a lot of soft tissue injuries, lots of pulled muscles just because of the lack of cricket. Like I keep reiterating, I\u2019ve done everything I can to keep cricket fit and when that first game comes, I\u2019ll be ready to go,\u201d Morris said.<\/p>\n
Turning up for the Titans in the CSA T20 Challenge places him in a superior space going into IPL 2021 however the difficulties will be in abundance after what Morris quotes, \u201cone big long pre-season.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a case where there hasn\u2019t been much match practice so I\u2019ve done everything I can. I\u2019ve basically had one big long pre-season. That\u2019s what I\u2019ve been telling people since my Titans time. I\u2019ve been running around, bowling my overs, bowling with the red ball, so yeah I\u2019ve been doing everything I can without actually playing cricket. There\u2019s no club cricket in South Africa at the moment (due to Covid-19). There hasn\u2019t been an opportunity to really play cricket but\u2026end of the day injury is part of the game. I\u2019ve been on the unlucky side of it, I\u2019d like to call it that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rajasthan Royals will be Morris\u2019s third IPL team in three years. He\u2019s played for four teams so far and all the moving around has implied acclimating to continually changing strategies and group work force. This year, he will be sharing his space with another all-rounder, Ben Stokes, yet he feels that his job will be \u201ctotally extraordinary\u201d to that of the 29-year-old from England.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s looking after the top-half, I am looking after the bottom half,\u201d Morris said. Morris also quoted, \u201cI think we\u2019ll have various parts to play. Clearly Stokes opens the batting. He\u2019s truly outstanding, if not the best on the planet. He\u2019s the best all-rounder that is playing right now. His job will be at the highest point of the order in the team line-up. My job will be to complete the game with my skills asI\u2019m a lower order batsman.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully I can contribute more with the bat this year. And Stokes bowled a lot less last year than he did in the last few IPLs\u2026 but look, the guy has got a magic touch so if we\u2019re feeding off each other in our different roles, I think we could be quite an interesting duo to come up against. We have two completely different roles \u2013 he\u2019s looking after the top-half, I am looking after the bottom half.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morris will also be playing under the captainship of Sanju Samson, which is new to him. According to him, he is a good player and fits well for the role of a captain. \u201cA new captain in an IPL team is always exciting and I\u2019ll be giving Sanju 100 percent support,\u201d Morris said. Earlier Morris had the experience of playing with Sanju, he said, \u201cI am obviously quite lucky because I have a good equation with Sanju. I\u2019ve played with him at Rajasthan and I\u2019ve played with him at Delhi so I\u2019ve got a very good relationship with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Praising Samson\u2019s ability of being a good captain he said, \u201cI don\u2019t see Sanju as a young captain, I see him as Sanju \u2013 the guy\u2019s a seriously good cricket player and he\u2019s got a very good cricket brain. For a guy who can keep wickets and who can field, he sees different angles, he sees different approaches from behind the stumps so I am sure he\u2019s got some good ideas, he\u2019s got some good interesting things that we can discuss when it comes to tactics and what the plans are. Sanju is a guy who wants to win, and he\u2019s a guy who is very serious about the game. So it is going to be interesting to see what he\u2019s got for us and I am looking forward to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThick skin and acceptance,\u201d Morris reveals. \u201cI think at the death, the person with the clearest mind usually comes out on top but you\u2019ve got to accept the fact that you\u2019re going to go for runs at the death. It\u2019s about limiting the damage. Next day when the sun comes up, you can\u2019t keep looking back. You can learn from it, but can\u2019t keep looking back. You\u2019ve got to look forward.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chris Morris has said that the bidding war that made him the most expensive IPL buy was a breathtaking experience,\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":154,"featured_media":25531,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[255,465,629],"class_list":["post-2443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cricket","tag-ben-stokes","tag-rajasthan-royals","tag-sanju-samson"],"reading_time":"5 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/154"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}