Since taking over captaincy from Vinay Kumar towards the end of last year, Manish Pandey has led Karnataka from the front with his impressive knocks of 40, 102*, 43, 50, 7 and 87* in the ongoing Ranji Trophy season so far. 

The right-hander, who has played 23 ODIs and 28 T20Is for India, seems to be relishing his time with the bat despite being bestowed with added leadership responsibilities. 

"Playing at KSCA, as a batsman it's important to be positive. The intent to score runs should be there. From previous games' experience, what I thought was being too defensive sometimes doesn't work, it hasn't worked in the past," Pandey was quoted saying after his matchwinning 87 off just 75 balls against Rajasthan at M Chinnaswamy stadium in the quarterfinal. 

"I was clear in my mindset to go in and look to score runs, especially boundaries because the boundaries are really small. They're a little easy to get once you're set. The first three boundaries I got - I know it was not very convincing - but after that we started to see the change (in Rajasthan's approach). Their voices dropped and things like that. It happens in cricket. That was my intention to go there and do the job."

"Today (the wicket) was not that difficult because the ball was not new, it was semi-new or old ball. The wicket was not doing that much as in the previous couple of days. I thought the target of 184 - one big partnership, of 50-70 runs, would have done the job for us. As me and Karun (Nair) were batting, after a point it became too easy and we eventually cruised through."

Pandey also talked about Karun Nair, who came back to form on just the right time with his 61 not out in this encounter after managing only 166 runs across his last nine innings for Karnataka. 

"Before the match I said a couple of innings don't really define a batsman. We back players who are willing to perform and have performed in the past. That's what Karun did, with his experience and hunger to get runs," Pandey further said. 

"Just before the big game, the semis, he wanted to bat and spend some time on the wicket. He did that beautifully, just backed his game and eventually the runs came. I think not just him, most batsmen have to think like this before big games.

"I thought it was never easy till the time we got the last runs. Karun did really well. He is the senior player, has played Tests. He did a good job there and helped Karnataka win," he concluded. 

Karnataka will now be playing either Saurashtra or Uttar Pradesh in the second semi-final kickstarting next Thursday, January 24. 

(Inputs from CricketNext)