Rajasthan Royals skipper Steve Smith said that they ‘just got AB-eed’, referring to AB de Villiers’ quickfire half-century, that led to his side’s seven-wicket loss to Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in the final over of the game on Saturday, 17 October.
Smith said that it will be a tough pill to swallow, recalling that RR have now lost two games in a row, where they were in the box seat and had chances to win.
He said that the loss was disappointing especially because they had played well for the majority of the game.
RCB needed 35 runs off the last two overs and left-arm pacer Jaydev Unadkat came in to bowl. On the first three deliveries of the over, AB de Villiers hit three sixes and RCB scored 7 more runs off the over to bring the equation down to 10 needed off the last over. RR handed the ball to Jofra Archer, but RCB scored the remaining runs in the first four balls.
Asked about the decision to bowl Unadkat instead of Jofra Archer in the penultimate over of the innings, Smith said, “We wanted to use JD (Unadkat) to the bigger boundary (on the leg-side of the right-hander in the 19th over), he bowls a lot of that slower stuff into the wicket. Obviously not big enough for AB.”
He added that there was a thought of going with Archer in that over, but he went the other way and unfortunately, it didn’t work for them, saying that de Villiers is in a different league altogether and played a special innings to win the game for his side from that situation.
Batting first, RR got off to a great start. On the back of Smith’s 57 and Robin Uthappa’s 41 (22), Royals got to a score of 177, which according to Smith was a pretty good total on a slow surface, if they took wickets, squeezed the run-flow and almost proved to be enough albeit a de Villiers special.
After a string of low scores, Smith came back to form with a half-century, giving the much-needed push to his team’s score. Asked about getting some runs, Smith said, “[It was] Nice to spend a little bit of time in the middle, get a rhythm, haven’t been able to do that. So, hopefully, I can keep going on from there.
Rajasthan Royals have now lost six games out of the nine they have played and are at 7th position on the points table.
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