Royal Challengers Bengaluru ended their six-game losing streak in IPL 2024 with a comfortable 35-run win over Sunrisers Hyderabad on Thursday. Rajat Patidar and Virat Kohli’s half-century took RCB to a competitive total of 206/7 before Karn Sharma, Cameron Green and Swapnil Singh took two wickets each to restrict SRH to 171/8. The SRH top order comprising of explosive batters like Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head, Aiden Markram and Heinrich Klaasen has been extremely impressive this season but the hosts suffered a massive collapse against RCB and that ultimately led to the defeat. SRH owner Kavya Maran was left stunned by the quick fall of wickets during the SRH innings and her irritated expression has gone viral on social media with users coming up with hilarious memes.
“Last two games, we’ve shown great signs of fight. SRH game was 270 plus, we got 260. KKR game as well – 1 run. We’ve been close for a while, but you need to win matches to get confidence as a group. Will sleep easier tonight. You can’t speak confidence into the group, can’t fake confidence into the group.”
“Only thing that gives confidence is performances. The competition is so strong, the teams are so strong that you’ll get hurt if you’re not at 100 percent. More guys scoring runs now. First half of the tournament only Virat was scoring runs. Greeny scoring runs now will be massive for him. We know that Chinnaswamy, that’s been a big frustration for us. It’s a difficult ground to bowl at. We’ve tried to find a recipe for it, but it’s tough,” RCB captain Faf Du Plessis said at the post-match presentation.
This was SRH’s third loss in IPL 2024 but they continued to retain the third spot in the points table.
“Not an ideal night. Few over par with the ball and unfortunately lost a few wickets throughout our innings. We were gonna bat first, it seems to be working for us.”
“Before the last few wins, we were thinking that we were a bowl-first team. Didn’t go our way. (Message to the group) I speak after wins, Dan (Vettori) speaks after losses. The boys have been going really well, it’s T20 cricket, you are not going to win every game. Don’t dwell on this too much.”
“(High risk, high reward approach with the bat) I think it’s our strong suit. It’s not going to work every game. One or two games where it hasn’t gone our way at the start, we still managed to get a good total. Still think this is the way forward for our boys,” SRH captain Pat Cummins said.
