Faf du Plessis, the captain of Royal Challengers Bangalore, gave his team’s performance in the IPL this season a scathing review, saying that they “wasn’t one of the best teams in the competition” and “didn’t deserve to be in the semifinal.”
Faf du Plessis, the captain of Royal Challengers Bangalore, gave his team’s performance in the IPL this season a scathing review, saying that they “wasn’t one of the best teams in the competition” and “didn’t deserve to be in the semifinal.”
Shubman Gill’s blazing century on Sunday helped Gujarat Titans to a six-wicket victory in Bengaluru, ending RCB’s IPL campaign prematurely yet again. RCB has never won an IPL championship, which would have infuriated Faf even more given that he led the run-getters chart despite his effort went in vain.
“I am so disappointed that our season ends there. If we take a hard look at ourselves, we’ll be honest in saying that we weren’t one of the best teams in the competition,”
said Faf, who took over as RCB captain this season.
“We were lucky that there were some really good performances throughout the season but, as a whole (and) as a team, we probably don’t deserve to be in the semifinal, if you look at the period of 15-14 games,”
said the South African in a post-match video posted by RCB on Monday.
Mumbai Indians would not have qualified for the playoffs with a victory for RCB, but GT, with Gill’s heroics, chased down a challenging 198 sets by the home team with five balls remaining.
“It (defeat) still hurts. I mean, we tried hard tonight (Sunday) and unfortunately just fell short. Looking at some real positives in the form of Maxi (Glenn Maxwell) this year, the partnerships we had between myself and Virat (Kohli)… a 50-run partnership in probably every game, the consistency was remarkable.
“(Pacer Mohammed) Siraj had a great campaign, so some high positives and some areas in the game where we were consistently not great, I think,”
added Faf.
RCB head Coach Sanjay Bangar said the team’s early exit despite some outstanding performances from Kohli, Faf, and Siraj was difficult to comprehend.
“It is indeed very disappointing because there were some outstanding performances. We had to finish a couple of close games but couldn’t. We found ourselves in a very tight corner towards the end but (it) doesn’t take away anything from the guys who performed.”
Although Faf scored eight half-tons and Kohli finished with two hundred and six half-centuries, the poor performance of the middle order ultimately cost them the season. However, Bangar claimed he was pleased with the team’s “attractive” cricket throughout the tournament.
“The performances put (up) by the team… we were a fighting unit, a very attractive unit throughout the tournament, just that very disappointed that we could not progress in the tournament,”
he added.