By Kings XI Punjab captain Ravichandran Ashwin,

I am proud of the boys for their performance on Friday. Some people might criticise some of the players and their performances, but I have always been clear that we want to play really electric cricket. If we go down, we go down like this. We want to be fighting and we fought really well.

It was a newly laid pitch, we could have done with more runs surely, but such is this format. The brand of cricket we played was exciting and at the end of the day that is what the fans and the team management expect from us.

Photo credit: BCCI/IPLT20.com

That being said we do want to be a team that can defend scores since you won’t always have the toss going in your favour. We are trying hard to work on that aspect of our cricket and hopefully in the coming games you will be able to see the result.

Turning it on

The spin department has got some real talent. All three of the spinners are current international players. Axar came back really well last night after the off day he had against Delhi and it augurs well going forward.

Sometimes people feel we are over-reliant on our spinners but for us, spinner or fast bowlers they all belong to the bowing group. I just help them and give them confidence to deliver every single ball to the best of their instinct and abilities. The M Chinnaswamy stadium wicket was not really suited for spin and we also had to struggle with dew as well, but we didn’t want to give any excuses. We wanted to show everyone what we are capable of and we did.

Clash of Kings

Our next game will be back home at Mohali and we are looking forward to that. We haven’t planned any knee-jerk changes. We have played good cricket and will continue to believe in all the guys we have. I am confident they will justify our faith in their abilities and deliver.