Royal Challengers Bangalore won by 112 runs over Rajasthan Royals in the 60th match of the ongoing IPL 2023 at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur on May 14. Batting first, RCB managed 171 runs in 20 overs, courtesy of Faf du Plessis and Glenn Maxwell’s 50+ scores. Later, Anuj Rawat played a quick cameo and helped his side post a decent total as well.
While chasing, Rajasthan Royals lost both openers for a duck. However, Joe Root scored 10 and Shimron Hetmyer top-sored with 35. And, no other batter could manage a double-digit score and they eventually got all out for 59 in 10.3 overs as well.
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Here is what the captains and the player of the match said after the game:
Wayne Parnell, Player of the Match said as quoted by Cricbuzz: Obviously, credit to our batters. The last over gave us momentum. We could execute well. The message was to take pace off the ball. Bowl it at the sticks. We were able to execute everything. The surface was low, slow and skiddy. Was trying to make them play across the line. When I wasn’t playing, I was preparing. It is a long tournament and you need to be switched on every game.
Faf du Plessis said as quoted by Cricbuzz: Really good for our NRR. Tough pitch. We batted first and assessed the conditions. We batted in the powerplay and thought 160 will be a good score. We have had a good set up till the 15th over. But we managed to capitalize on the momentum shift at the end. Great job. Bracewell would want to bowl on this every day of the week. We needed a left-arm spinner. May be Shahbaz could have been an option. Wrist spin could have been an attacking option. Hopefully, we can set it up for the last game at the Chinnaswamy. Today was a good one for the team. They needed this confidence to go into the last two games.
Bracewell said as quoted by Cricbuzz: It was nice to get those two points, very valuable in the competition. Was nice to contribute in the win. We have a great support staff at RCB, just feel a part of it (even when you are not playing matches). It was a difficult wicket to get going. The way he (Rawat) batted, he gave us a lot of momentum going into the second innings. A lot of credit goes to the top three batters who set the tone for us. I got a little lucky today, that’s the nature of T20 cricket. I try and not get caught up with the highs and lows of the game. There were a couple of niggles in the squad, so the others got a chance. There are two must-win games for us, as a group we strive under this pressure. We were fortunate enough to get those two points, now looking forward to the next games.
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Sanju Samson said as quoted by Cricbuzz: I think our top three were scoring a lot of runs, we go hard in the powerplay but it didn’t come out today. I think it’s too soon to analyze or dissect the game. You need to go hard in the powerplay knowing the ball was getting slower and older, that’s the way me, Jaiswal and Jos have played throughout. Credit to the RCB bowlers for their energy and intensity. I think this was a target that could have gone to the wire, I expected a tight match if we had a decent powerplay. I was just thinking seeing the batting collapse where we went wrong? I don’t think I have an answer to that yet. We all know the nature of the IPL, we’ve seen some funny things happen in the league stage. We have to keep strong, take a day off and think about the game in Dharamshala. I think we need to end on a strong note. We have to take responsibility on the whole as a team for this performance.
