Rajasthan Royals skipper Sanju Samson defended the decision to bowl first in Ahmedabad against Gujarat Titans on Wednesday, April 9. RR won the toss on the day and thought the pitch was suited for chasing on the day despite the three games at the venue being won by teams setting a target. GT put on 217 for 6 on the back of Sai Sudharsan’s 82.
In response, RR lost Yashasvi Jaiswal and Nitish Rana early and never looked comfortable in the chase. They ended up losing the match by 58 runs, their third loss of the season. Speaking at the post-match presentation, Samson felt that his side gave away 15-20 runs extra while bowling and felt they could chase the target down.
“Yeah, rightly said. Around 15-20 runs we gave extra in bowling. A couple of sixes and some extra runs we gave away. To be honest, whenever we wanted to carry on with the momentum, we lost wickets. When I was batting with Hettie, the ball was coming onto the bat nicely. We believed in chasing it,” said Samson.
Samson said that there was purchase at the start for the pacers but felt they let things slip in the death overs. The RR skipper said that he doesn’t want his side to be one that is good only at defending and they want to chase totals.
“We wanted to bowl first. There was definitely some purchase at the start. Jofra started brilliantly with the ball. But we let things slip away in the death overs. Probably, we will have a look at it in the next few days before we come back for the next game.”
When you lose games or end up on this side, we also feel that we could have chased it. We have to respect the conditions. We don’t want to be a team that is only good at defending. We also want to chase totals. We want to develop our skills in both and keep moving forward,” said Samson.
RR will now head to Jaipur where they will face RCB on April 13.
