It was yet another disappointing outing for Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) at Chennai Super Kings’ (CSK) home ground M. A. Chidambaram Stadium as they failed to win on the opening day of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 season. A defeat that sees RCB winless at the coveted home of their South Indian rivals since 2008 had a silver lining on the dark cloud despite making a good start to the match. After the defeat on Friday (Mar 22), skipper Faf du Plessis accepted that his team was always behind in the contest having lost momentum with the bat.

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Faf reflects on defeat

“Unfortunately, we lost a little bit too many wickets in that first seven overs, which meant that the guys needed to bat a little bit and stable the innings again,” du Plessis said on the official broadcast after the game.

“And, at the end, I felt we were 15 or 20 runs short on a pitch that wasn’t as bad as we played in the first ten overs,” he further said.

“When you play here, you feel like you have to almost get ahead of the game a little bit in that first six overs because CSK is a very good team in the middle overs. For so many years, they squeeze you with the spinners,” du Plessis added.

CSK make winning start

Having won the toss, RCB made a good start with Faf (35 off 23) and Virat Kohli (21 off 20) putting CSK bowlers under pressure, however, a spell of three wickets in two overs completely changed the landscape of the innings. The visitors were soon narrowed to 42/3 despite being 41/0 and looking in good nick. The poor spell saw Glenn Maxwell and Rajat Patidar depart for ducks before a late rescue act from wicketkeeper-batter Anuj Rawat (48 off 25) and veteran Dinesh Karthik (38 off 26) saw RCB end with 173/6.

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However, the total was not enough with CSK too making a good start with the bat. In a complete team performance, everyone contributed with the bat as the home side won with eight balls to spare. Ruturaj Gaikwad (15), Rachin Ravindra (37 off 15), Ajinkya Rahane (27), Daryl Mitchell (22), Shivam Dube (unbeaten 34) and Ravindra Jadeja (unbeaten 25), helped CSK steer to an opening day victory.

CSK next take on Gujarat Titans at the same venue in Chennai on Tuesday. On the other hand, RCB will look to get their first win of the season when they next take on Punjab Kings in their first home game of the season on Monday in Bengaluru.

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