Mumbai: Rising Pune Supergiant’s team owner showered praise on skipper Steve Smith as the team takes on Rohit Sharma-led Mumbai Indians in the final of IPL 2017 in Hyderabad on Sunday.

Pune, who finished seventh in the previous season of the Indian Premier League, made an unbelievable turnaround this year to become the first team to qualify for the finals.


RPS, who invited a lot of criticism after MS Dhoni was removed from captaincy before the season commenced, are now a win away from clinching the IPL trophy under the new skipper Steve Smith.

Team owner Sanjiv Goenka lauded the Australian captain saying his mind is ahead of Dhoni’s.

“MS is one of the greatest minds I have interacted with. And he is the best wicket-keeper in the world. The one mind ahead of Dhoni’s is (Steven) Smith’s. My brief to Smith was – ‘win the championship’. It’s difficult to believe the way he has planned some dismissals; the tact and firmness with which he has dealt with tricky situations and the win-or-nothing attitude he has been able to infuse into the team (and) get them to gel as a unit,” Goenka was quoted as saying by the Hindustan Times.

“You need to win eight (or) nine games to make the playoffs and Smith told me that between him, (Imran) Tahir and (Ben) Stokes, we would win seven. And players of the calibre of MS will always give you something. We had more match winners this time, players who would need five (to) six balls to settle down instead of 20. And we had not factored in Rahul Tripathi, Washington Sundar and Jaydev Unadkat. Tripathi and Sundar are going to be serious players on the Indian cricket scene,” concluded Goenka.