Gujarat Titans had to play three matches in six days, including playing the final less than 24 hours after landing in Ahmedabad. But Vikram Solanki refused to use those inconveniences as an excuse for Sunday’s defeat to Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the IPL final as well.

“The number of games in a short period of time is challenging. Of course it is, at the end of a campaign, but I’m not going to lean on that at all,” Solanki said. “The fact is that RCB have beaten us today, and we must be strong enough to hold our heads high and be proud of the campaign that we’ve put together, yet also be gracious enough to congratulate RCB. So, I don’t want to take away from the fact that RCB have won by simply saying, ‘Oh, we’ve had this number of games in such a short space of time and we’re fatigued.’ That’s not really what we’re about.”

However, GT played Qualifier 1 in Dharamshala on May 26, travelled to Chandigarh the next day and featured in Qualifier 2 on May 29. They eventually reached Ahmedabad at around 10 pm on Saturday, as their flight from Chandigarh was delayed by the heavy rain and storms as well.

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“Unfortunately, I can’t control the weather. If the weather means we have to land late, then there’s nothing we can do about it. We had an opportunity to challenge RCB. In parts, we did, but they were the better side today and I think it’s as simple as that,” Solanki again said.

“That was a bit of a judgement call. Ashish (Nehra) made that call to send him in at No. 3 at that time. We didn’t really discuss it, but Ashish makes those calls now and again, if the captain is around, in conjunction with the captain,” Solanki added again. “We probably just made a slight miscalculation of what score was appropriate on that pitch. I don’t think it was a 200-plus pitch of any sort. I think if we had got somewhere around the 180-mark, that would have been a challenging total for them to chase.”

“We’re all privileged to see good players play, and Virat is an exceptional player. He played a great knock for his team. I’m probably not celebrating that knock right now,” he said, adding: “Virat played very well to almost anchor that chase and guide it the way he did. The number of times I’ve had to answer that question… quite seriously, we’ve just played a final. This notion of the top two or top three (overdependence)… we’ve played a final. I think you should accept the fact that we’ve had a reasonable campaign, and the details of that are there for everyone to see – the number of runs scored and so on,” he further added.

He also congratulated RCB on their second title but also maintained that GT’s campaign was no less successful.

“What I’ll say is, I’ll begin by congratulating RCB. They’ve had an outstanding campaign. They finished at the top of the table in the league stage and then went on to beat us twice, so we must take that on board. First and foremost, congratulations to RCB. As far as our campaign is concerned, we’re immensely proud as a group of what we’ve achieved. There’s no question that we would have liked to have gone one step further, but there are a lot of other teams that would have gladly taken our place as well,” Vikram Solanki concluded.