Royal Challengers Bangaluru lost their first match of the season against Chennai Super Kings on March 22. In spite of getting a good start in the first three overs, CSK pulled the game back as Mustafizur picked up two wickets in his first over, bringing Chennai back into the game.
After losing a couple of wickets in the powerplay, RCB almost played a catch-up game throughout their innings. One of the biggest setbacks for RCB was that two of their star middle-order batters, Glenn Maxwell and Rajat Patidar, failed to trouble scorers.
Speaking of the match at the post-match presentation, Faf du Plessis believes that top order is the major reason behind RCB’s loss against CSK.
Faf du Plessis said, “When you play here, you feel like you have to almost get ahead of the game a little bit in the first six hours overs because Chennai is a very good team there in the middle. They have done it for so many years that they squeeze you with spinners. So unfortunately, we lost a little bit too many wickets in the first seven overs, which meant that the guys needed to bat a little bit and stabilize the innings again. I felt like we were 15 or 20 runs short on the pitch.”
RCB had lost their half of the game with just 78 on the board. It was the partnership of 95 runs between Anuj Rawat and Dinesh Kartik that pulled RCB back in the game.
Speaking about the same faf, Du Plessis said, “Yeah, look, we’re always a little bit behind, as I said, in terms of trying to get ahead of the game. You know, they were batting at a pace where they’re always still in front of the game. Even though we were pulling it back, we were trying to somehow find some opportunities to get wickets, and obviously, with Dube, he was not really comfortable with the short ball. So I’m just trying to expose myself to try and get some wickets through the middle overs. But at the end, we were short of runs.”
