Rajasthan Royals' head coach Kumar Sangakkara was disappointed with his team's performance and considered it “embarrassing”. Rajasthan faced their fourth loss in the last five games they played. It was Gujarat Titans spinners who created chaos for the Royals’ batters. Rashid Khan and Noor Ahmad's heroics routed Rajasthan Royals by nine wickets.
“It is embarrassing for anyone when you don’t play well,” he told reporters.
“We were very, very poor in terms of capitalising on the starts we got. We were showing intent for a while, but we were a little bit reckless, and then we had very, very little intent against the two spinners. Rashid bowled brilliantly, I thought Noor bowled really well as well, but that’s the time the batters need to step up and show more and more intent.”
“Even a defence in T20 cricket has to have the intent of wanting to score. You work down the sequence of 6, 4, 3, 2, 1; or, if you’re under pressure, you go 4, 3, 2, 1. But you are always looking for opportunities to score, and at the minimum, getting off strike”, Kumar added.
“And once that intent is shown, it doesn’t matter how good a bowler you are, you are always thinking that you can’t give the batter anything loose because you’re going to get put away. So that’s one area that we’ve got to really look at.”
Rashid scalped three wickets after just giving away 14 runs while Noor Ahmad picked up two wickets for 25 runs, restricting Rajasthan to just 118 runs in the 18th over at home.
“The young man showed a lot of character. He didn’t have the greatest in terms of his first outing against us, but since then he has bowled exceptionally well”.
“Again, it is just how you arrange your game against… so-called mystery spinners. And if you show intent, you see that Noor, with a lack of experience, can bowl balls that are hittable but you’ve got to get that rhythm going off rotation of strike, putting the bad balls away and constantly reversing pressure on the bowler”, Sangakkara stated.