Xtra Time Web Desk : The MS Dhoni led Chennai Super Kings on Wednesday lost their 7th game of the Indian Premier League 2022 against Royal Challengers Bangalore by a margin of 13 runs at the MCA stadium at Pune.
Despite of starting well, the 2021 champions did fumble during the slog overs, courtesy of some poor finishing by the lower order batters after restricting the Royal Challengers Bangalore side to 173 in their 20 overs.
And after the match, losing CSK skipper MS Dhoni opened up on the loss and stated ‘Batsmanship’ as the reason for their loss after giving credit to the bowlers for restricting the opponents to a chasable total.
“We did well to restrict them to 170 runs. What really let us down was the batsmanship. I feel especially when we are chasing, you know what’s required on the board and what the bowlers are doing. At times you have to curb your instinct and try to see what the situation is demanding rather than just play your shot. If the batsmanship had been slightly better, maybe in the last few overs we wouldn’t have needed many runs. We got off to a good start, we had wickets in hand and the wicket kept getting better. It’s just that we kept losing wickets at regular intervals. If you take care of those things, chasing is more about calculation and batting first is more about instinct. As a batter in the middle, you have to decide on those things,” said Dhoni in the post match presentation ceremony.
“We need to keep looking at what went wrong. It’s easy to get distracted by how many points you have. It’s the process that matters more than where you are positioned in the points table. If you take care of those things, then the points table will take care of itself,” added the former Team India skipper.
On the other hand, the winning captain Faf Du Plessis was a much relieved man in the post match presentation ceremony after accomplishing a win after a 3 match losing streak.
“We definitely needed that, just for the confidence in the group. The guys have been doing some good things behind the scenes but you have to do it out in the middle. To put up a decent total today on a wicket with a bit of challenge towards it, I think we’re definitely moving in the right direction with the batting lineup and confidence the guys are getting. With the bowling department, we’ve been very good throughout the tournament so it was just a case of backing it up with some good runs,” said the South African batter after the match.
“But it’s about making sure we get the wins. If we get the wins, we’ll be there or thereabouts. I never think about it too far ahead,” added the 37 year old.
Royal Challengers Bangalore with this win are now back amongst the race for reaching the playoffs this season, while Chennai after this loss have now almost out of contention for reaching the top four.