IPL 2025 | "He needs to start from Ball One again and he understands that": Jayawardene on Vignesh Puthur

So, what made Mumbai blood a little-known young bowler in the pressure match against Chennai?

Mahela Jayawardene was delighted with Vignesh Puthur’s instant success, but the Mumbai Indians head coach said the left-arm wrist spinner needs to keep his feet on the ground and “start from Ball One again” in the IPL match against Gujarat Titans here today. Vignesh (3-32) scalped three wickets against Chennai Super Kings in his Indian Premier League debut a few days ago to hog the limelight. So, what made Mumbai blood a little-known young bowler in the pressure match against Chennai?

“It’s just the skill set. He wasn’t fazed with anything we’ve thrown at him. That’s a good thing about him. Yes, it was unknown for us because he hasn’t played, but I thought he held his nerves and bowled brilliantly,” Jayawardene told the media here on the eve of the match against Gujarat Titans.

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“It’s a learning process. He needs to start from Ball One again and he understands that and we’re just building for that,” he added. Jayawardene said Vignesh was always in the scheme of things once he saw the Chepauk pitch. “We just felt that whether it’s the last game or whether it’s the 10th game or whether it’s next year, he was always going to play for MI and he was ready to play.

“And given the combination that we wanted to play, once we went to Chennai, we saw the wicket as well and we felt that it’s for his skill set that suited and for him to play that game,” he noted. But the process of preparing the 24-year-old spinner from Kerala for big games had started much ahead of the IPL, when he was sent to Cape Town to train alongside Rashid Khan. “I was part of the thought process. It was just to expose him to cricket because we felt that there is talent and he hasn’t played much cricket. VP was chilled and he’s getting along with it.”

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