"No doubt, Yuvi was exceptional today. His partnership with Mahendra Singh Dhoni was the turning point of this match. We were not expecting it to go that further. We were thinking about restricting them to 160-170," Hafeez said at the post match conference here.
He also praised pacer Ashok Dinda, whose three-wicket haul helped India to win the second match here and level the series 1-1.
"I think they did the basics right. Dinda was good in the last two overs. His yorkers were right and we thought if we can get a ball to hit then we can win the match. But the second last over, Dinda bowled well where Kamran and I got out. If either of us had scored a boundary, then it would have eased the pressure," he said.
He further said that hosts handled the pressure well and kept their cool during the death overs.
"There wasn't much dew but they handled the pressure well. Their bowlers bowled really very well, which they didn't do in the last couple of matches. Today they were on target," he said.
He lauded the effort of his team who came close enough to win the second match and said, "I will credit to the entire team for the performances they have produced in these two matches. There are some positives which have come out of this series.
"Muhammad Irfan is one of them. His bowling was positive for us in this series. Shoaib Malik's return to form was positive for us. In this match, during the middle session after 10 overs, we couldn't bowl well. We didn't follow the basics and it cost us too many runs in the end."
