Faf Du Plessis explains the reason for RCB’s defeat against RR during the IPL 2024 eliminator: ‘With impact player…’

After staging a remarkable comeback in the league phase of the tournament, RCB missed out on a chance to reach the IPL final after losing the eliminator against Rajasthan Royals on Wednesday. Soon after the defeat, RCB captain Faf Du Plessis spoke out about some of the reasons that led to his team's loss in the eliminator.

Speaking to the broadcasters after the match, Du Plessis said, “Batting first, it can be tough because the ball is sticking into the surface. You're thinking 190. But if you lose a couple of wickets then the problem starts.”

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Du Plessis also said that while 180 was a par score on the "very slow" Narendra Modi Stadium pitch, the presence of dew in the second innings and the impact player rule meant that RCB ended up at least 20 runs short.

He said, "With the dew coming, we felt we were short with the bat. Did think we were 20 runs shy of what was a good score. Credit to the boys - they fought really well. That's all you can ask for. If you look at naturally assessing the pitch and conditions, you would say it's a 180 pitch because it was swinging upfront and was quite slow,"

"But what we found out this season is with obviously the extra batter and the longer batting line-ups because of the super sub [Impact Player], your par scores are really not what they used to be, especially if there's dew. So we knew we needed a little bit more in terms of a score to challenge them." the RCB skipper added.

Rajasthan Royals beat Royal Challengers Bengaluru, move to qualifier 2: 

After a shaky start, RCB posted 172/8 in their allotted 20 overs thanks to a quickfire knock from Mahipal Lomror and a cameo from Swapnil Singh. In reply, RR faltered a little in the middle overs but eventually managed to get back into the game through the partnership of Riyan Parag and Shimron Hetmeyer.