Royals Challengers Bangalore’s (RCB) drought in the Indian Premier League (IPL) continued for one more season as the team was eliminated by defending champions Gujarat Titans (GT) in the play-offs race on Sunday, which was also the final league match of the tournament. Despite imposing a stiff 198-run target for Gujarat, which included an unbeaten 101 off 61 balls by Virat Kohli, RCB were hammered by six wickets as Gujarat completed the target with five deliveries to spare.
Shubman Gill emerged as RCB’s biggest nemesis on a cloudy night at the Chinnaswamy Stadium as he too smashed a ton and was named the Player of the Match. While this was the story on the pitch, RCB skipper Faf du Plessis didn’t hold back and admitted his side “didn’t deserve” a final four berth.
“I am so disappointed that our season ends there. If we take a hard look at ourselves, we’ll be honest in saying that we weren’t one of the best teams in the competition,” Faf said in a post-match video posted by RCB on Monday.
“We were lucky that there were some really good performances throughout the season but, as a whole (and) as a team, we probably don’t deserve to be in the semifinal, if you look at the period of 15-14 games,” the skipper added.
A win would have helped RCB sealed the fourth and final play-off berth, which was secured by Mumbai Indians following the outcome. The five-time champions had defeated Sunrisers Hyderabad by eight wickets earlier in the evening.
“It (defeat) still hurts. I mean, we tried really hard tonight (Sunday) and unfortunately just fell short. Looking at some real positives in the form of Maxi (Glenn Maxwell) this year, the partnerships we had between myself and Virat (Kohli)… a 50-run partnership in probably every game, the consistency was remarkable.
“(Pacer Mohammed) Siraj had a great campaign, so some really, really high positives and some areas in the game where we were consistently not great, I think,” added Faf.
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