Rajasthan Royals captain Riyan Parag failed to lead his team to the IPL 2026 final as his team was knocked out of the tournament at the penultimate hurdle. On Friday, the RR were handed a seven-wicket defeat by the Gujarat Titans in Qualifier 2, despite Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s another swashbuckling knock of 96 runs off 47 balls.

“I can’t really put it into words. There’s one way where you just go and slog and then you get a lot of runs. But the way he’s batted, it’s not just slogging. It’s not blind slogging. You can’t do what he just did today if you were just going from ball one. He calculates; he assesses conditions. He does literally everything well. I still can’t figure out how, but hopefully, he keeps doing that. Hopefully, he represents our country and brings more laurels to the nation. And hopefully, he keeps on playing for Rajasthan Royals and gets us to that second championship,” Riyan Parag said during the post-match presentation ceremony.

Speaking about the team’s performance in Qualifier 2, he said RR’s total of 215 runs was a par score, but he also felt the wicket got better in the second half, which helped GT in the run chase as well.

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“It was a par score. I think 215 was defendable, but I felt the wicket got a little better in the second innings after the heavy roller. In the first innings, I felt the spinners had a little bit more grip, and the shorter, slower balls were sticking in the pitch a bit more,” he said.

“At one stage, it looked as if 230 was on the cards, which in these big games can make a difference – those extra 15 to 20 runs. I think 230-240 would have made that chase really challenging. But with 215, given their batting line-up, we knew we had to get the openers early, which we didn’t,” he again added.

“A whole lot of positives, actually. But if I had to sum it up in a sentence or a few lines, I feel we were not supposed to qualify. I feel we had a lot of young faces, less experience, less cricket played in the IPL, and a lot of new transitions and combinations we tried and tested. But I feel the character that the boys have shown and where we’ve reached today, being thrown straight into the IPL, I feel it’s a great start for a long journey ahead,” Riyan Parag concluded.