Rajasthan Royals The captain Ryan Prague Terming his team’s heavy defeat at the hands of Sunrisers Hyderabad as a minor setback, he urged his team to move forward quickly. RR suffered a massive loss of 57 runs after being blown out early in the chase of 217. The damage was done in the first over when debutant pacer Praful Hinge struck three times, leaving Vibhu Suryavanshi, Dhruv Jorrell and Luan Dre Pretorius to shock Rajasthan. Reflecting on the loss, Parag admitted that the team had little time to dwell on emotions and acknowledged SRH’s strong performance with the ball. “There’s not much time to get emotional, to be honest. We lost back-to-back wickets, thanks to their bowling. There might be some misunderstandings on our part, but we will just take it as a shock and not think too much about it.” Parag also reviewed the pitch conditions, suggesting that a chase could have been a better option, although he admitted that the collapse of RR’s batting hurt them more than anything else. “(On the pitch) it was actually pretty good. I felt it might have been better to bowl the second ball, maybe because we lost wickets. It was a bit sticky with the new ball with the shine. After the shine, I felt, it slowed down a bit and we could have bowled the second, but then it’s backwards and we could have batted better.” The RR skipper reserved special praise for SRH’s debutant seamers, particularly Parful Hang and Saqib Hussain, who combined to complete the batting line-up. “Well, I guess I haven’t seen them much locally, but I think I played Sakib once when I played against Bihar vs. Assam. But he bowled beautifully. I felt the pressure on him with the home crowd supporting him and chanting his name and things like that. I felt the way they bowled the first four overs, the first four, five overs, I thought was really beautiful. Parag also explained not using his tactical call. Ravindra Jadeja With the ball, referring to the shape of Ishan Kishan as an important factor. “(On not bowling Jadeja) I felt we started really well. Maybe could have done a few things here and there. Jadu bro, I don’t know, just leave the second decision aside. Ishaan was batting really well, so I didn’t want to take that chance. Trust Bishnoi with the overs. But I felt that with the way the wicket was playing, they were definitely 30 overs.” Despite being reduced to 9/5, RR showed some fight through a 118-run stand between Donovan Ferreira and Jadeja, which eventually reached 159. “As far as the batting is concerned, I think to go down five wickets for nine runs and still get 160, that says a lot about the depth of our batting.” Looking ahead, the young captain remains optimistic, insisting that the team will regroup as soon as possible for their next match. “Absolutely, like I said, it’s just a blip and we’ll move on to Kolkata and do something better.”
