Royal Challengers Bengaluru faced a 42-run defeat against Sunrisers Hyderabad and failed to finish in the top two in the points table. Reflecting on the loss, RCB batter Phil Salt didn’t seem too worried by the nature of it, and he also didn’t feel like it would hurt them much as well.
“I mean that’s one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it is, you don’t mind having this game not in the playoffs,” said Salt at the post-match press conference. “You can take it as a disappointment or you can take it for what it is. We’ve qualified but we’ve lost the game. No one likes to lose games of cricket. I’m hating the fact that we lost, as will everybody else in an RCB shirt, but we’d rather have this now than in an eliminator.”
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“We did a lot of good things (while) chasing it down. Obviously, we got it to a point at 15 overs where every single person in our dressing room would believe that we’re going to win that game. Obviously, the margins are most of the time fine, but the margins for failure were very fine tonight. You hit an over of 20 at that time and you go a long way in icing the game. Cricket can be like that sometimes. We’ll have a look at what we did well and what we can do better,” he again shared.
However, having a second shot at winning the title is a priceless moment to have at this stage of the tournament, but Phil Salt feels that RCB are mentally prepared for any kind of challenge that is bound to come their way as well.
“I can’t sit here and tell you that we prefer to finish first, second, third or fourth. We’ve qualified for the playoffs, and once you’re in the playoffs, you’ve got to go and play in a carefree manner and do what you can to win the trophy. We’re not too far ahead of ourselves at the moment with that thinking. In a few days, we’ll be playing here again against Lucknow in a game that we want to win and show everyone how good we are. It’s pretty simple, pretty straightforward, we’re just looking at the next game,” he stated.
“It’s a funny one. When you’re ill, you sit on the bed and wonder if you’re ever going to feel better again. You think of all those things you took for granted when you were healthy and all that sort of stuff. As a group, we hadn’t played cricket for three weeks, and I don’t think I played in a month, which is a long time. More than anything else, I’m just glad that I’m healthy and playing another game of cricket,” Phil Salt concluded.
