With seven losses this year in the Indian Premier League, it is all down to equations now for Royal Challengers Bangalore to qualify for the playoffs.
A disappointed Royal Challengers Bangalore skipper Virat Kohli on Tuesday rued the fact that they will now have to adopt a "wait and watch" policy to know their chances of qualifying for the play-offs after the team slumped to its seventh defeat in Indian Premier League 7.
RCB on Tuesday lost by seven wickets to a clinical Sunrisers Hyderabad side to make life difficult for themselves in the tournament. (Highlights)
RCB now find themselves in the fifth position in the points table with two more games to follow. However, a win in the next two matches will not be enough to seal their play-off berth as their fate now depends on the results of other games as well.
"Before this game, we have things in our hands to qualify. We had to win this game to keep things under our control. But now we will have to wait and watch what other teams do and hope for the right result, which is not good situation to be in," Kohli said at the post-match press conference.
"We were in such a situation last year as well but we played good cricket to put ourselves in a position where we had the control of how to play the last three games. But we could not hold on to that momentum this year," he said.
Kohli was dejected with the fact that his good show failed to help his team clinch a victory against Sunrisers. Kohli led from the front with a 41-ball 67 - his first half century of the tournament that was punctuated with six fours and two sixes.
"We could not execute our plans in the end and suffered because of that. Sunrisers played well throughout the second innings. We pulled things back nicely, but just not good enough to cross the line. I mean, 22 in two overs with momentum on our side, we should have defended. If you don't execute your yorkers, you are going to suffer in the end overs," he said.
Kohli said shortcomings in the bowling department cost RCB the match on Tuesday.
"Twenty20 is a very short game and you don't need just two good overs, if you want to get back into the game, you need four in a trot. I think we bowled 50 per cent of good balls and then we just gave the momentum with the areas that we did not want to bowl at. That cost us in the end," he said.
"The bowlers did a good job to make a come back into the game. I think we just failed to grab on to that momentum," he added.
Kohli feels RCB has lost quite a few close games this year because it could not maintain its composure under testing conditions.
"We lost quite a few close games. It is not that we were thrashed by the opposition. We just failed to hold on to our composure in those testing times. We need to be composed enough in important situation to be on the right side of the result," he said.
Referring to RCB's matches against Mumbai Indians, Rajasthan Royals earlier in the tournament, Kohli said: "If we had won those close games, we woud not have been in a situation like this. We cannot look back but we have not been able to maintain our composure."
Meanwhile, Sunrisers Hyderabad captain Darren Sammy was happy to register the much-needed victory that according to him had put SRH back in play-off contention.
Our performance was much improved. We batted really well. (David) Warner and Shikhar (Dhawan) gave us the start we wanted. At the end, we got the victory we needed," he said.
"We have not played our best but we have a chance. You never know what would happen. Cricket is a glorious games, fortunes keeps shifting. We will have to win all our matches," he said.
Story first published on: Wednesday, 21 May 2014 11:17
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