IPL 2023: Jason Roy urges KKR to keep pushing hard amid disappointing first half in IPL 16

KKR have lost five out of their seven matches in the ongoing IPL so far.

Jason Roy | BCCI-IPLKolkata Knight Riders (KKR) are enduring a tough time in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL), having lost five out of their seven matches so far.

The two-time IPL winners are currently on a losing streak of four straight games and they badly need a win to get their campaign back on track.

KKR will face RCB at Chinnaswamy Stadium on Wednesday (April 26), whom they had thrashed by 81 runs in their previous meet earlier this season.

Ahead of the game, swashbuckling batter Jason Roy admitted that it has been a tough first half for the Knight Riders, urging them to "draw a line in the sand" and keep pushing hard.

"The talk in the camp is to just keep pushing hard, we got to enjoy ourselves. It is very easy in cricket, especially in short formats to lose and (resultantly) lose a lot of confidence," Roy told the media during his pre-match press conference.

"We are trying to keep the confidence high, smile in the change room, making sure our methods do not change too much. As individuals we need to look in the mirror, get better each session and think how we can individually impact the game in a better way. We have had some good individual performances along the losses, which is a bit of positive, but a loss is a loss," he said.

"We got to draw a line in the sand now that the half of the tournament is done for us and we just got to push forward," Roy added.

Jason Roy, who slammed 61 off 26 balls while batting at No. 5 in the last game against CSK, said that he wanted to open but could not due to the rules since he had left the field during the first half.

"I left the field for 12 minutes at the end of our innings so I was not able to bat for further 12 minutes when our innings started, and it just so happened that we lost those wickets when we did.

"It is just the rules of the game, unfortunately. There was no reason behind it, I really wanted to open and I was pushing my case to open on that wicket, and had to try and do the job in the middle-order," he said.

Even though KKR have consistently lost wickets at the start, Roy isn’t reading too much into KKR's struggles in the powerplay.

"The guys are training, working hardest to be the best version of them. There is no reason behind it; it is just the way cricket goes sometimes," he said.

(With PTI Inputs)

 
 

By Salman Anjum - 26 Apr, 2023

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