Dravid refuses to blame his batsmen after another tame surrender that seen them lose to Punjab Kings by 10 runs.
Dravid refuses to put the blame of Rajasthan Royals’ last evening’s loss on the batsmen.
The Rajasthan Royals (RR) have already dropped eight of their nine IPL 2025 chasing games. Five of these losses have come by 11-run margins or less. They were far ahead of the opponents in four of these chases. They were favourites at the beginning of the final five overs in one, but they had to come back.
But this IPL, they have only hit two targets below 200 and none below 180. According to coach Rahul Dravid, their bowling was just as bad as their hitting, if not more so.
“It’s been a tough one,” Dravid said when asked to assess the middle order. “We’ve got close, but we haven’t been able to finish the job. It’s been one of those kind of seasons where you always feel with the ball that we probably give 15-20 runs extra and then you’ve got yourself in some really good positions to win the games, but we haven’t been able to finish the job and a little bit around that lower, lower-middle order we just haven’t been able to click and get the big shots that we need.
“I mean, it’s been five games now where the margins have really one or two hits which you need in that phase, which, we just haven’t been able to do. So it’s not that we’ve been losing too many wickets, we’re still only five down today, but we just haven’t been able to hit those shots.
“There’s no point just blaming the batsman. I think with the ball also, to be honest, I didn’t think it was a 220 wicket, it was about a 195, 200 wicket, and we gave 20 runs extra. If we look at the numbers, we have probably not been good enough with the ball. Both at taking wickets and controlling runs. We are chasing 200-220 every game.”