IPL 2020: Match 55 – RCB vs DC – Who Said What

The 55th match of the Indian Premier League saw action between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Delhi Capitals. The fight was intense to grab the second spot in the points tally. However, DC sealed second place after defeating RCB by six wickets. Batting first, RCB could post only 152 runs on the board when they wanted to score big. The young and consistent Devdutt Padikkal again smashed a sublime half-century (50 off 41) to push forward his team in the crucial situation.

Anrich Nortje was named as the player of the match for displaying class pace attack during prime time. AB de Villiers’ 35 off 21 remained essential to push the team forward in the crunch situation. Nortje and Kagiso Rabada were dangerous enough to restrict opponents on an average score. Nortje bagged three wickets while Rabada named two under his belt. Ravi Ashwin was the economical man from DC’s bowling unit.

Chasing the target, two half-centuries from Delhi’s batting unit defined their innings. Ajinkya Rahane shined for the first time and on a perfect occasion by smashing 60 off 46. Shikhar Dhawan’s 54 off 41 were too essential in building the chase game for DC. Shahbaz Ahmed picked two wickets for RCB.

Losing skipper, Virat Kohli said

It’s a mixed bag. As I said at the toss, you come to games to try and get the result your way. Through the 11th over, the 17.3 mark was informed by the management. I think we controlled the middle phase really well and they could’ve taken the game away from us. We are happy that we’ve qualified. Top two would’ve been very really nice. But I think we’ve played good enough cricket to earn a qualification spot. You could say just before the qualification, the mindset was a little bit tentative. We’ve got two games to reach the final.

We have a shot, an opportunity and that’s all we want as a team. I’m sure the guys will be excited about what’s ahead for us. We can be more more brave with the bat in pockets. With the ball, we were decent, probably we could have a strong Powerplay which is our strength. If we implement those things, we’ll be at the right end of the result. It’s important to stay positive. There are going to be learnings along the way, but we are are glad that we are through. We’ll have to asses what’s happening, hopefully they’ll (Morris and Saini) be fine by the time we play our next game. And see how they go in the next few days.

Winning skipper, Shreyas Iyer said

Very chuffed with the performance. We knew it was a do-or-die and an opportunity for us to get to the second spot. We were really motivated and the teams winning in tha latter half completely changed the scenario of the table and it was really commendable and really happy with how the tournament has gone so far.

The bowlers were really up with their plans and they knew what they had to execute. Nortje was really good and it worked out pretty well. Kudos to the way the bowlers bowled. We are one of the best teams in the tournament and we need to stick to the basics and if we try and execute our plans, the results will come.

Player of the match, Anrich Nortje said

I said it time and time again, it’s just doing the basics right and wasn’t about something special from one guy. Coming into this game, small things started feeling better and I think those small things, once you get that right, you get your rhythm. We were thinking to make them hit to the bigger boundary and stick to our plans against each batsmen. There was little bit dew at the end of our innings and we tried not to be predictable. Yorker would have been the obvious option and we wanted to change it and see how it goes and wanted to hit the hard length. Having a bit of extra pace always helps. All ready for the playoffs (smiles).