Rajasthan Royals captain Sanju Samson rued his team’s poor batting performance against Mumbai Indians but also made an effort to defend his players by saying that playing on the Sharjah pitch proved to be quite tough after their 8-wicket defeat in Match 51 of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 on Tuesday.
Rajasthan were restricted to 90 for 9, the lowest total in IPL 2021 and the lowest score while batting first in Sharjah, with Evin Lewis’s 24 being the highest score in their lineup.
RR batsmen just couldn’t adjust to the slow and low nature of the pitch against the likes of Nathan Coulter-Nile, James Neesham and Jasprit Bumrah, who shared all 9 wickets between them for the defending champions.
Coulter-Nile produced figures of 4 for 14 while Neesham, playing his first game for MI this season, grabbed 3 for 12 as both finished with their career-best IPL figures while Bumrah picked up 2 wickets.
Samson later revealed how tough it was to bat on the Sharjah Cricket Ground in the first innings.
“It was a bit challenging wicket to bat on, it was tougher in the first innings. Coming from Abu Dhabi, playing in Sharjah was a massive difference. Can’t blame the batsmen a lot, but it was tough to bat in the first innings. Abu Dhabi had one of the best batting wickets, switching to Sharjah was tough,” Samson said after the game.
“We knew that they’ll be coming strong, in the powerplay they wanted to increase the run-rate. The wicket was a bit better than the first innings but they batted really well.”
RR still have an outside chance of qualifying for the playoffs but there are very slim chances of that happening as they dropped to 7th on the points table and have just one league game remaining in their campaign.
“It’s a bit tough and cloudy in the mind right now, we need to take some time off and then think about the next game. We’d definitely like to play a better game of cricket in the next game,” Samson concluded.
