South African spinner Imran Tahir gave himself a nice birthday presentation when he put in a match winning performance to spare the blushes of his side in their ICC World Twenty20 match against minnows Netherlands in Chittagong on Thursday. Tahir, who turned 36 on the day, picked up 4-21, as South Africa snatched the win from the jaws of defeat. The Dutch made a brave attempt to chase down to total before being dismissed for 139 runs in the penultimate over.
‘I was always confident of winning the tie,’ said Tahir.
‘But to be honest I am not enjoying bowling here compared to Dhaka as there is much lesser turn here,’ said Tahir.
‘Still we knew we can make it with the bowling we had,’ he said.
Tahir added he was happy that eventually his plans on every opposition player are paying off dividends.
‘I have certain plans that I work on to execute during the match time,’ said birthday boy Tahir.
‘With the help of video analysis we try to sort out their weaknesses, though it is not always easy to watch some things on the video, and just implement the plans,’ he added.
While Tahir was happy with his performance, Netherlands were not disappointed either, especially after they were all out for 39 runs in their previous match.
‘We can take a lot of positives as we were down after the last match,’ said Netherlands skipper Peter Borren.
‘We knew we are not a team to perform that poorly and it was nice to see we almost pulled it through against a world-class team,’ he added.
-With New Age input
