Du Plessis: ‘Your decision making is clearer when you are winning games’

Faf du Plessis praised his team’s “fight” but said that sometimes, in key moments, you need the clarity and confidence you get from winning, and that’s where Royal Challengers Bengaluru fell short in their nail-biting one-run defeat to Kolkata Knight Riders.

Chasing 223, RCB were well set at 137 for 2 after 11 overs, with Will Jacks and Rajat Patidar‘s 102-run stand keeping them ahead in the game despite losing two wickets in the powerplay.

But Andre Russell sent both set batters back in the same over and, in the next over, Cameron Green and Mahipal Lomror were out to Sunil Narine. Jacks, Patidar and Lomror all got out going for big shots. It all added up to RCB going on to lose a seventh game in eight this season.

“I felt like you could see just towards the end there, there was perhaps a little bit of, you know, when you haven’t won games in a while, just that clarity [missing],” du Plessis said after the game. “I felt like we got really nice and close to the game there. And the over from Narine was probably the turning point for me, when they got those two wickets.

“I think that’s … where we feel like the game is changing,” du Plessis said of the batters trying to hit boundaries from the word go. “It doesn’t feel like there’s much more time to get yourself in.

“Obviously, you have the extra batter [with the Impact Player rule]. So the batting lineup is a little bit longer. But generally, the guys who come in and want to take six or seven balls to get themselves in and get six of six… You know, when you’re chasing 230, 240, 250, it just feels like the game doesn’t allow you to do that anymore. So it is tough.

“But I think especially, like I said, we got that massive over before the Narine over and then it feels like you’ve got a bit of a window. You almost just play the match-up again with Narine.

“I mean, that’s what I talk about those little moments where if you’re winning games and you get the confidence of how to get your team across the line, then your decision making is a little bit clearer in that space in the middle.”

Du Plessis hailed the effort shown by RCB in the field, despite conceding 222 after choosing to chase. “I feel like really proud today of the boys, the way that we fought in the field,” he said. “I thought for the first time in this competition, even though the scoreboard says 230 [222], I mean, there was a couple of big overs towards the end, but just a lot of fight out there.

“Everyone was trying really hard to make sure that we keep them to a total that we felt was defendable. And we did, you know?

“At the halfway stage, we thought that there was a par score and we wanted to try and attack that powerplay, which I think in the powerplay, you have to do it.

“I think when the field is up, you have to try and maximise as many runs and even be okay with losing two or three wickets,” du Plessis said. “But [then] there is a space in the middle there where you could look at the scoreboard and see what you need to do.”