AB de Villiers
Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) had a disappointing end to their IPL 2020 campaign. Eyeing to lift their maiden IPL title, Virat Kohli's men were knockout out of the tournament by SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) in the Eliminator at Abu Dhabi. They endured a torrid run in the latter phase of the tournament, suffering four defeats on the trot in the league stage.
After being put to bat first, RCB started their innings with the fresh opening pair of skipper Kohli and Devdutt Padikkal. However, both failed to deliver as RCB slumped to 15/2. Wickets kept falling at regular intervals but AB de Villiers (56 off 43) and Aaron Finch (32 off 30) stuck in the middle to avoid a batting collapse. In the end, RCB managed to post 131 runs on the board but it wasn't enough to mount pressure on the SRH batting unit.
Led by Kane Williamson's gritty half-century and Jason Holder's vital cameo, SRH hunted down the total and cruised to the Qualifier 2 against Delhi Capitals (DC). RCB contingent and fans were left heartbroken after the defeat as the team failed to lift the silverware yet again.
After the match ended, all RCB players gathered in the dressing room for one final time in this season. In the clip shared by RCB's Twitter handle, skipper Kohli can be seen delivering a speech about their performance this season.
“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," said the RCB skipper.
Meanwhile, de Villiers apologised to fans for not making to the finals. The South African stalwart also assured that they'll make 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.
