BENGALURU: After slumping to the fifth defeat on the trot in the IPL 2024 season, Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) skipper Faf du Plessis admitted that the team's confidence has taken a hit after a string of losses and remarked, "Cricket is tough when the team's confidence is low."
On Monday night, RCB suffered their sixth defeat in seven games after losing to SRH, who managed a record for the highest total in IPL history with 287/3, beating their record of 277 set against the Mumbai Indians (MI) earlier in the season.
RCB entered the match without a single specialist spinner and with Mohammad Siraj on the bench, their bowling line up looked inexperienced. They went for the off-spin of Will Jacks, who was taken for 32 in his three overs. Pace bowlers Reece Topley, Yash Dayal, Lockie Ferguson, and Vijaykumar Vyshak were belted for 137 off ten overs.
"Credit to us for hanging in there and trying to get closer towards the end. We tried a few things behind closed doors. It's a sign of confidence in the group and in the bowling department. The game of cricket is tough when your confidence is down, there is nowhere to hide in the game. When you are not on top of your game it is difficult and you got nowhere to hide.
"Obviously with five bowlers even tough on a wicket like that. I think we will have to keep trying different things, maybe bring in a bit of leg spin to try and get some wickets in the middle overs," Du Plessis told broadcasters after the match.
Chasing a mammoth total of 287, Du Plessis (62 off 28) and Virat Kohli (42 off 20) set the tone for the RCB chase. Then came a vintage performance by Dinesh Karthik, who single-handedly kept the hosts in play with 35-ball 83, as RCB finished with 262.
Despite the loss, du Plessis was pleased with the efforts of the batting unit and said, "Similarly from the batting perspective, we need to work on a few areas. There were some errors we need to address as a batting unit. We have gone pretty well in the powerplay but there has been a bit of a drop after the powerplay and that's something we want to get better as a batting unit, make sure the rate doesn't go down and keep going up because that's just the way the game has evolved with the scores the teams putting up."
"From that aspect really proud to see the boys put up their hands tonight with the bat and never gave up. You see often in today's cricket where one team has a big score like that, a lot of times the team will fall away like a deck of cards. So, it was good to see there was a bit of fight in us but at the end, just about 30-40 runs from a bowling perspective was too much," the skipper added.
Du Plessis also highlighted the importance of the entire team taking a break from the game to rejuvenate their minds. "You need to go away and freshen your mind. This is such a mental game, sometimes when we have back-to-back defeats like these it does feel like your mind is going to explode.
"So important to get away from it and make sure when you do get back to your next challenge, you show full commitment, 100% fight, you can't be floating around 70% the way the game is being played at the moment," he concluded.