Arghhhh. Just not the result you want against your game after giving a fight as proper as this. Let’s face it, the Washington Freedom were favorites to win the game with the asking rate always being in their favor. But the way the MI New York bowlers fought, stitching in the dot balls, hitting back with wickets, we really had hope. Alas.. The comeback from 20 being needed off 24Washington needed 20 off 24 balls. The game seemed done. They were romping home. Not so easily when you have MINY at the other end though! Naveen-ul-Haq, on a mission after the previous game to rectify his death bowling, produced an absolute beauty of an over – picking the wicket of Obus Pienaar and conceding just two runs. Trent Boult did better in the next, giving away just one run. Suddenly, the equation was at 17 being needed off 12. Alas, it wasn’t to be as Mark Chapman killed the game with a couple of boundaries. Another day, another Monank specialHe continues his dream run: 62, 20, 93 and now a 20-ball 32, setting the tone in the powerplay to get MINY off to another solid start. Quinton de Kock found his groove as well, smashing a 34-ball 55, studded with seven fours and two sixes to lay the platform for a big total. Although Michael Bracewell produced a 24-ball 42, the final explosion to get us past 200 didn’t quite come from the others as MINY had to settle for 188/4 in their 20 overs. The Sunny Patel-styled fightHe began with the wicket of Andries Gous in the powerplay, but it his wicket of the big fish – Mitchell Owen – who was on a rampage to get 62 off just 26 balls, that brought us back in the game in the first place. His change-ups in pace along with a bunch of variations have been quite handy all season. Sadly, with cameos from Glenn Maxwell, Jack Edwards and Mark Chapman, the Washington Freedom got home in the final over. Let’s not get too disheartened, folks. We’re still in the first half of the league here. There’s enough positives for us to know that it is only a matter of time before the tide turns. And when it does, we’ll make sure it’s a tsunami! 

With figures of 4-0-37-2, including the wickets of Adries Gous and the dangerous Mitchell Owen, Sunny Patel has been one of the biggest positives in the MI New York bowling attack this season. Bowling Coach, Mitchell McClenaghan was equally in praise of the veteran bowler in his post-match press conference chat. Excerpts.. On the MINY bowlers’ performance so farWe’ve got experienced bowlers in our unit. I think tonight we were a little off, and I think we’ve been all through the tournament so far. The plans have been good but the execution has been lacking. Teams have been able to navigate around the big guys and we haven’t been able to support around them. Thoughts on the league so farIt's nice. Another challenge. I love the game, love sharing knowledge. It’s nice seeing the talent of the US players across all teams actually. It’s getting stronger every year. I have been enjoying the league. Bowling plans as the bowlers fought it out towards the end It is still in our minds how Texas brought the game back against us in the first fixture. You’ve got to keep reminding yourself as a bowling unit that if you can take it to the last over, you always have a chance. Sometimes you can panic with the ball and try and think that you have to get wickets earlier in the game than you actually need to. You can take it deeper and build pressure. I must commend our bowlers, they did that this evening. Unfortunately, we were just a little bit short. On Rushil Ugarkar having a tough start with the ball He's an exciting talent. He moves the ball at the top which is why he got the second over today. We missed our line, like we did against Finn Allen and now against Mitch Owen, they will make you pay. He’s a big man and hits it strong and hits the ball hard. I’m not going to come hard on the bloke. We will assess and pump him up. Even though Mark Chapman got them across the line in the last over, he (Rushil) showed some great skills. He just missed a couple of yorkers against him. Lot of positives. He was just against an absolute beast at the top of the innings today. On Sunny Patel’s superb spellSunny has been the surprise package of our side this year. He bowled really well in the warm-up matches for us. He probably missed his length a couple of times trying to search for wickets. Sometimes that happens. I think he’s bowled exceptionally throughout the tournament. He’s become a banker. We are missing Rashid (Khan). He has filled that hole superbly. We’re missing Nosh (Kenjige) as well. He’s filled that role really nicely. He’s a mainstay in this side. I really like how he’s been able to hold his lengths against some of the world’s best players. On the batting unit not having clicked so farIt’s another batter-friendly wicket. The outfield is so fast as well. Our batting is going to click. You look at our unit, we are getting 180s, and we haven’t really had Nicholas Pooran come off. You’ve got some world class players, when they hit form, they don’t stop. What I must commend from the Washington Freedom was that their fielding was exceptional. Get got a hand to a lot of balls and saved 10-15 runs in the field. Thoughts on having Pollard bowl the 20th over The plan tonight was to use our resources early. We had to use Boult and Naveen early to try and put pressure on them. Pollard’s over was really good and kept us in the fixture. Historically, if you look at Polly’s 20th overs which he’s bowled in the past, he has the knack of getting the ball to the keeper. Whatever he does, he gets good bounce, he is hard to hit. He can be difficult if you are chasing 10 runs in the over. He’s not a bad man to have a backup to bowl the 20th over. 

It’s a happy MI New York camp, signing off from the Oakland Coliseum with a win. And what a win it was. The Head Coach, Mark Boucher, was at the post-match press conference, and he couldn’t be more proud of the way his boys turned this around. Excerpts.. Thoughts on the gameIt was our third close game in a row and it was quite good to win one. We should have won the first game and the second game was quite tight. Today was a good day for us to get on the board. Good game of cricket. There’s been some very tight games. Today the pitch played its part, it was a very good cricket wicket and it produced a fantastic game. On Monank Patel’s superb innings It doesn’t surprise me. Monank is a fantastic player and that is why he is playing for the USA as well. His first innings showed me that he knows how to score runs. He struggled upfront in the first game but he stuck it out. Today, he came in, the conditions were tough in the powerplay, especially in the second innings. He stuck to his plan as well and he really expressed himself after that. He played some fantastic cricket shots all around the park. When a guy like Heinrich Klaasen, who’s one of the top batters in the world, said it was an impressive innings, it says quite a bit. It doesn’t surprise me. A lot of the locals I’ve seen here are very talented cricketers. Sometimes their self-belief lets them down a bit. But that will come with a bit of time when you perform against top players. As this league grows a little older and the players mix with some of the best in the world, they’ll take a lot of confidence from that. On the team batting slowly through the powerplayIt was a plan. If you look at their powerplay, they were 32/2 and they got to 200. The trend of the tournament, especially in the second innings is that the wickets have been slightly up and down in the powerplay, but in the back ten it really starts to slide on and becomes difficult for bowlers. We knew we wanted to get off to a good start and limit the amount of wickets we lose in the powerplay. We felt the runs weren’t quite there but we were setting ourselves up for an onslaught at the back end. I was very happy with the start we got. We felt Brace (Michael Bracewell) had been batting really well and was the perfect guy to go in. He also struggled a bit but then towards the back end he really pulled it through. Reasons for not going hard at the startI think it is the pitch. Against the new ball it is a little up and down. It is difficult to line up a bowler. It is very much bowler friendly in the first six overs. At this venue, a lot of teams capitalize in the back end rather than lose too many wickets in the powerplay. If you look at games where teams have batted well, barring maybe the first game, you look at that and get the percentages in our favor as a batting unit and that is what happened today with both sides. On Nicholas Pooran batting lower down the order It is largely due to the pitch as well. We know the stats, we know how good he is. We just felt we’d rather give him an opportunity to come in towards the backend of the game when the bowlers are under pressure rather than him getting in too early and getting a ball that keeps low or hits the gloves. You’re trying to give your best players the best opportunity to put the opposition under pressure. That could change in Dallas. A lot of people wonder, Nicky P (Pooran) is one of the best batters in the world, why wouldn’t you want to give him more balls? But we just wanted to play him where he is best suited for our team. On Nosthush Kenjige’s injury status Nosh has been a big loss for us at the start of the tournament. He has gone for a scan recently and we are just waiting for those results to come in. Certainly, he is one we would love to get into the equation. He is a massive player. I haven’t really worked with him, but he is very keen to get out there as well. We haven’t replaced him and hopefully we can get some positive information from the doctors. Whether there were thoughts of subbing out BracewellWe know what Bracewell is like. He showed it towards the backend when he finished the game off. I wasn’t too concerned because of the way Monank was batting. At no stage did I think of retiring him and getting someone else in. He has played some fantastic knocks in the few games he has played for New Zealand as well. Sometimes it looks tough when one guy is batting like a dream and the other is struggling a bit. You just need one hit to get away. There’s got to be something really extreme to be swapping a player. On Naveen-ul-Haq having a tough game If you have a look at how they lined their attack up today, they also took it easy in the powerplay and wanted wickets at the end. We wanted to get our best, most-experienced bowlers bowling to them as well. He bowled in really tough overs today and took one for the team. He struggled with his execution a bit today but he is a fantastic bowler and someone had to go out there and bowl the tough overs. There’s still a lot of positives to take out of the way he has been bowling. That’s the tough thing about bowling. You look at him and Boulty (Trent Boult) to bowl the tough overs. It’s just the nature of T20 cricket. You come off on certain nights and on some nights you don’t. Unfortunately he didn’t come off. But there is a lot of support from the dressing room.