Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) were eliminated from the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 on Friday night as they lost their playoffs encounter against Sunrisers Hyderabad in Abu Dhabi. The six-wicket defeat shattered Virat Kohli and his men’s hopes of winning the maiden IPL title.
The Sunrisers outplayed the Challengers in every department. After being put in to bat first, RCB managed to post only 131 runs on the board with a loss of 7 wickets. Later, their bowlers failed to defend the total.
Wicketkeeper-batsman AB de Villiers was the only player who held his fort against the SRH bowling unit. Battling all alone, ABD contributed with an innings of 56 runs off 43 deliveries. However, that wasn’t enough to challenge the Orange Army.
After the end of the match, RCB players gathered in the dressing room for one final time in this season. While skipper Kohli recalled the positives and delivered a passionate speech, de Villiers apologised to RCB fans for not making it to the final.
The moment was captured on the camera and shared by RCB’s official Twitter handle. In the video, De Villiers stated that he is hopeful of his team making a stronger comeback in the next season.
“To all our RCB fans, thank you so much for the support. Wish you guys were here throughout the tournament, we could’ve done with a bit of support from you guys in the stadium, but it wasn’t meant to be. Hopefully next time. Sorry about not going all the way. We gave it our best shot, and we had a lot of fun.
“There’s a lot of positives which we will take on board moving forward. Thank you for supporting us and always being behind us,” said de Villiers.
Captain Kohli agreed to the fact that his side lost the momentum in the second half of the league. However, he believes that there are many positives to be taken forward.
“I think we played some good cricket and fell off at the back end. Probably we didn’t play our best game since losing to Mumbai Indians. We would have loved to go even further as fans the wanted. But some positives in the season. Like Devdutt, stepping up for the team and having a great season. And Siraj coming back nicely after a tough season last year… A lot of positives that definitely we can take forward,” said Kohli.
Here’s the video:
A memorable campaign came to a disappointing end, but the RCB players savour the final moments together in the dressing room before they fly out of Dubai.
PS: After about 80 consecutive days, this is our final 9 AM video for the #IPL#PlayBold #Dream11IPL #WeAreChallengers pic.twitter.com/BfZ5FrHWPH
— Royal Challengers Bangalore (@RCBTweets) November 7, 2020
