Happy to win tournament: Lasith

Chennai: Sri Lankan fast bowler Lasith Malinga was adjudged Man of the Series for his all-round performance for Mumbai Indians who on Sunday night won the Nokia Champions League T20 tournament here defeating Royal Challengers Bangalore by 31 runs in the final.

Malinga, who also won the Golden Wicket award for the most number of wickets, 10, said: "I am happy that our team won. I am in the Mumbai Indians team as a bowler, but I managed to score a few runs also.

"We targeted about 140 today, and we managed to take wickets at regular intervals. Like I said, I am very happy that Mumbai Indians won the tournament."

Mumbai Indians skipper Harbhajan Singh, who won the Man of the Match award for his haul of three wickets and also leading the side to victory, attributed the success to self-belief and some good performance by youngsters.

"At the start of the tournament, we were not the favourites, but we played with a lot of self-belief. Tonight also our coach Shaun Pollock spoke to us before we went into bowl and told us to believe in ourselves.

"We knew that if we could get Gayle, Dilshan and Virat Kohli, early, we could win the game. We gave it our best shot tonight and won.

"If Mumbai Indians can win the tournament without Sachin Tendulkar, Rohit Sharma and Munaf Patel, I am sure we can do even better when they come back into the team," said Harbhajan, referring to the injured trio who missed the Champions League competition.

Royal Challengers Bangalore skipper Daniel Vettori expressed disappointment at his team's defeat on Sunday night and blamed it on a batting slump after a good start.

"We had a great start, but lost wickets thereafter. We thought it was a tough but gettable target. We knew that the pitch would be play like the way it did as we had watched the previous games on this surface," said Vettori.

David Warner of New South Wales won the Golden Bat award for scoring most number of runs in the competition, 328, including back-to-back centuries.