RCB suffered 34 runs loss against PBKS in an IPL 14 encounter.
Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) Director of Cricket Mike Hesson says the loss against Punjab Kings (PBKS) had more to do with the slowness of the pitch than any lack of effort by his team.
Royal Challengers Bangalore suffered 34 runs loss against Punjab Kings in their seventh match of IPL 14 at Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad.
Invited to bat, PBKS on account of skipper KL Rahul’s 91*, Chris Gayle’s 46, and a cameo by Harpreet Singh Brar, in the end, posted a total of 179 runs.
Defending the target, the Virat Kohli-led side was comprehensively defeated by an inspired bowling performance by PBKS. Young Harpreet Singh Brar emerged as a star performer with the ball. He along with leg-spinner Ravi Bishnoi combined to take 5 of the RCB’s wickets.
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Brar finished with stunning figures of 3-19, picking up the scalps of RCB skipper Virat Kohli, Glenn Maxwell, and AB de Villiers, and helped his side achieve a must-needed victory by 34 runs.
While analyzing the performance of his team, RCB’s Director of cricket operations Mike Hesson said that it was tough to manufacture big shots, and the harder they tried the more difficult it got.
“It was getting difficult to force the ball. I think you could stand and force the ball once but when you were trying to hit, it was getting very hard. We weren’t getting any timing on it. The harder we tried to hit, the worse it got. We needed to get one into the stands but it was very difficult,” Mike Hesson said.
Hesson said that although they fought back really well after Chris Gayle had put them under the pressure. He added that the KL Rahul-led side got 15-20 runs extra on the Ahemdabad wicket.
“He (Gayle) came in and put us under pressure and we probably couldn’t respond as well as we could have. Then we fought back really well (restricting PBKS to) 100 for 1 after 10 overs. But over the next 6-7 overs, we just let it slip.
“They (PBKS) probably got 15-20 more runs than would have been ideal on this sort of a wicket. Had they been restricted to 160, we would have approached the game slightly differently,” he said.
Mike Hesson further said the team will analyze the areas they need to improve on like being more proactive with the bat in the middle overs.
“When we do the review, we might look at how we can operate better on these types of surfaces and how we can be a bit more proactive with the bat through the middle (overs), and get us up to speed with the game. Just try and up the ante,” he concuded.
With 5 wins out of their seven games, RCB is placed 3rd on the pointe table and will next face Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) on 3rd May at Ahmedabad.
(IANS inputs)