Photo: SPORTZPICSIt was Royal Challengers Bangalore who ended up victorious by 17 runs in a tight game against Kings XI Punjab at the Chinnaswamy Stadium on Wednesday. The defeat saw the Shers remain on 10 points with three games to spare in the VIVO Indian Premier League.
Speaking on the game, KXIP’s captain Ravichandran Ashwin said “The game was in the balance till the very end. Even two overs 30 runs was gettable on this ground against a bowling attack that we have seen crumble before so we did back ourselves with David (Miller) and Pooran (Nicholas) going really strong.
“We just couldn’t finish it off. The teams that play the crunch situations in the end probably are victorious in T20 cricket and that’s what you back the senior players to do, unfortunately didn’t quite turn out that way today.”
The defeat means that KXIP might now require three wins out of the three games left to secure a passage into the top four, with an away game against Sunrisers Hyderabad to follow next.
Speaking on the upcoming matches, Ashwin said “We will have a couple of more players who will get fit by the time we go to Hyderabad so that’s a big boost. You can look at it as three out of three now but it is very important that we take it one at a time.
“The last two games are at home where we have played reasonably well so it is very important to get an away game on the way at SRH. We’ve played some good cricket to have won only five games, so it’s not quite pleasing that way but going into the next three games I’m pretty confident we can turn it around.”
