Dubai [UAE]: Rajasthan Royals coach Andrew McDonald feels that the Steve Smith-led side displayed a below-par performance in a much-needed game and lost the match in the powerplay itself.
Chasing 192, Royals scored 19 runs off the first over, but Robin Uthappa (6) also ended up losing his wicket to Pat Cummins. In the third over of the innings, Cummins dismissed Ben Stokes (18) owing to a spectacular catch from Dinesh Karthik and five balls later, Steve Smith (4) was sent back, reducing Royals to 32/3. McDonald said the side never got going and Cummins’ spell had put them on the backfoot at the start of the game from which they weren’t able to come back.
“It was below-par performance and below what we’d expect. In the last couple of games, we’ve chased down big totals and today we never really got rolling. To lose five wickets in the powerplay generally puts you on the backfoot. We never really gave ourselves a chance to build a foundation and chase down the total,” said McDonald in the post-match press conference.
“Pat Cummins’s first over was interesting – 19 runs with a wicket. And then he got another couple of wickets on the back of that. We can’t pinpoint an exact reason. We thought we had the best of conditions in terms of the dew. We thought we gave ourselves a good start and it was a total we should have chased,” he added.
The Royals’ coach feels that being inconsistent in the tournament is the main reason that the side has failed to qualify for the playoff.
“Some of the cricket we played throughout the tournament was inconsistent. There were a couple where we could have clearly won. Looking back at the RCB game, AB took that game away. Against Delhi also, we weren’t able to chase it down,” said the coach.
“We can’t really blame the conditions or the venues, we played inconsistent cricket. We won two games in a row and then a few inconsistencies crept in and we couldn’t complete the job today,” McDonald added.
With this win, KKR has moved to the fourth spot in the points table with 14 points from 14 matches. On the other hand, Rajasthan Royals is now out from the playoff contention after losing the match against KKR. (ANI)