Rajasthan Royals captain Rahul Dravid blamed the batters for the seven-wicket loss against Pune Warriors on Thursday.
He was not happy with the batting collapse but was confident that his team would bounce back. “We just kept losing wickets and that cost us dearly. Just when we thought we could accelerate, we lost Ajinkya Rahane, (Stuart) Binny and then I got out. We lost wickets at crucial times and we could not have kicked off for a bigger total,” Dravid said after the match.
Rajasthan Royals skipper Rahul Dravid
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Royals were nicely placed after 12 overs with the score of 81 for one but soon were tottering at 106 for five in 16th over. At the end, they could only manage to put up 145 runs on the board. “Maybe we were 15 runs short but the way they batted, even that might not have been enough. We have seen (Aaron) Finch before, we discussed him,” he said about the Warriors opening batsman who was instrumental in Pune’s victory.
Dravid admitted the quality of the batting line-up of Warriors and said when power hitters fire, there is not much a bowler can do. “They have plenty of power-hitters in the team, Finch, Robin Uthappa, Ross Taylor and Yuvraj Singh, and if they come off, it is difficult for us to do anything. Someday, some of them would have to come off firing and they did today. There’s little we could have done,” he added.
He stressed on the number of matches remaining and said there was enough time to turn the tables. “We need to look to keep improving, look to forget this match and kick on. We can do that and it’s early days in the tournament, we have the side to come back,” Dravid said.
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