Our turnaround was no fluke: Gambhir

Kolkata Knight Riders skipper Gautam Gambhir today said their sixth win on the trot in the IPL was not a fluke and asked his team-mates to maintain the intensity in the play-offs.
"It's still a long way to go. The important thing is to turn up in two days time and play with same passion. The actual tournament starts now," Gambhir said after KKR beat Royal Challengers Bangalore by 30 runs to book a play-off berth.
The 2012 champions had started off the tournament with two wins from the first seven matches and had a four-match losing streak before bouncing back in style with six wins on the trot after the India leg began.

Gambhir said he always believed in his team and backed his boys despite losing four matches in a row.
"I'm pretty relieved... It's very satisfying. Deep inside the heart, I thought we had enough talent to turn it around. It's satisfying but not surprising. It has not happened by fluke. We have really worked hard for it. Everybody has taken up responsibilities," he said.
"We were close, not beaten by convincingly by anyone. We should have finished them but sometimes freak things happen. We're always very competitive and took the game to 19th and 20th over. I have always believed if we can use more brain and play intelligently and a bit more calm as well, we can turn it around," he added.

"I've not changed anything individually, I've not changed the fortunes," he said giving credit to the whole team.

Gambhir said they were keen to remove the chokers tag and it was a personal decision of him to go for the chase in the five earlier games which they won.
"There's another reason I wanted to chase was that a lot of people were tagging us as chokers... To get that out of our mind, we wanted to chase. That was my personal decision to chase in those five games. I wanted to get rid of tag that we're chokers and cant finish games.

"By chasing five games in a row, it has given the entire unit a lot of confidence," he said referring to their four consecutive losses while chasing in the initial stage of IPL-7.
But today RCB won the toss and put KKR upfront and Gambhir said it was not a problem for them either.