Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) captain Faf du Plessis dedicated his Player-of-the-Match award to pacer Yash Dayal, who held his nerves in the final over to secure a 27-run victory over Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in the battle for the last IPL 2024 playoffs spot.
Du Plessis was adjudged Player-of-the-Match for his impressive knock of 54 in 39 balls. He added 78 runs for the opening wicket with Virat Kohli (47 off 29 balls), leading the foundation for RCB’s gigantic total of 218/5 at the Chinnaswamy Stadium on Saturday (May 18) night.
Chasing a daunting target, CSK needed over 200 runs to qualify and came remarkably close, with MS Dhoni and Ravindra Jadeja launching a brutal assault towards the end.
The defending champions required 17 runs off the final over, but despite Dhoni hitting a towering six off the first ball, Dayal maintained his composure and restricted CSK to 191/7.
“I dedicate this Man of the Match to Yash Dayal. The way he bowled was unbelievable. For a man who's fairly new, he deserves it. [on what he told Dayal before the last over] Pace off is the best option on this pitch and trust your skills and enjoy, this is what you trained for. The yorker did not work the 1st ball and he went back to pace off and it worked unbelievably well,” Du Plessis said during the post-match presentation ceremony.
Before the game, there were predictions that the virtual knockout fixture might be washed out. While there was a 40-minute rain interruption, it didn't matter in the end.
The RCB skipper stated that the pitch became extremely difficult to bat on post the rain break. In fact, he had a discussion with Kohli and they felt a total of 140-150 would be ideal on this wicket.
“What a night. Unbelievable and such a great atmosphere, such a pleasure to finish off the season at home with a win. Batting first, I think it was the hardest pitch I have ever played on in T20s. Myself and Virat were talking about 140-150 after we came back from the rain break. The communication from the umpires was there was a lot of rain on the pitch, they wanted to push the game and that makes sense. When we came back, my goodness, I was telling Mitch Santner it was like a day 5 Test match at Ranchi and to get 200 on that was unbelievable,” Du Plessis said.
“The last 6 games the batters have batted with good intent and good strike-rate. We were slow earlier on and we wanted more intent and that was awesome. We were defending 175, it got a bit close, at one stage, with MS there, I thought, oh dear, he has done it so many times. The way we bowled with the wet ball was unbelievable, we tried to change it,” he further remarked.
Faf du Plessis also acknowledged the immense crowd support they got at the Chinnaswamy Stadium.
“It's crazy, even when we weren't winning the fans were here. We in the changeroom we felt it was something we had to get right. Coming here tonight, it was set up nicely, CSK v RCB, unbelievable atmosphere and we as a team will do a lap of honour to thank the crowd for the support. It's really important that we enjoy this, great 6 games in a row and the first goal in the IPL is to get into the knockouts and we have done that, enjoy this but get back to work tomorrow,” he concluded.
(With PTI Inputs)
