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Faf du Plessis admits RCB weren’t one of best teams, didn’t deserve to be in semis | Cricket News – Times of India


NEW DELHI: After another premature exit, Royal Challengers Bangalore skipper Faf du Plessis expressed disappointment with his team’s performance, acknowledging that they were not one of the strongest teams in the competition and did not deserve to reach the semifinals.
A crushing six-wicket defeat against the Gujarat Titans on Sunday led to RCB‘s abrupt campaign end once again. The failure to secure an IPL trophy has been a recurring theme for the team for 16 seasons now.
Despite Faf’s exceptional individual performances — the leading the run-getter in the tournament – RCB’s overall performance fell short. The skipper’s efforts, unfortunately, did not translate into the team’s success.
Du Plessis’ candid assessment reflected the team’s realization that they have areas to improve upon in order to become a stronger contender in future seasons.
“I am so disappointed that our season ends there. If we take a hard look at ourselves, we’ll be honest in saying that we weren’t one of the best teams in the competition,” said Faf.
“We were lucky that there were some really good performances throughout the season but, as a whole (and) as a team, we probably don’t deserve to be in the semifinal, if you look at the period of 15-14 games,” said the South African in a post-match video posted by RCB on Monday.
A win for RCB would have denied Mumbai Indians a spot in the playoffs but GT, thanks to Gill’s heroics, chased down a competitive 198 set by the home team with five balls to spare.
“It (defeat) still hurts. I mean, we tried really hard tonight (Sunday) and unfortunately just fell short. Looking at some real positives in the form of Maxi (Glenn Maxwell) this year, the partnerships we had between myself and Virat (Kohli)… a 50-run partnership in probably every game, the consistency was remarkable.
“(Pacer Mohammed) Siraj had a great campaign, so some really, really high positives and some areas in the game where we were consistently not great, I think,” added Faf.
RCB head coach Sanjay Bangar said the team’s early exit despite some outstanding performances from Kohli, Faf and Siraj was difficult to comprehend.
“It is indeed very disappointing because there were some outstanding performances. We had to finish a couple of close games but couldn’t. We found ourselves in a very tight corner towards the end but (it) doesn’t take away anything from the guys who preformed.”
Kohli ended up with two centuries and six half-centuries, while Faf scored eight half-tons, though the poor performance of the middle order ultimately cost them the season. However, Bangar said that he was happy the team played some “attractive” cricket throughout the tournament.

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“The performances put (up) by the team… we were really a fighting unit, a very attractive unit throughout the tournament, just that very disappointed that we could not progress in the tournament,” he added.
(With inputs from PTI)





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