IPL 2023: RR skipper Sanju Samson says his team needs to play 'better cricket' after 10-run defeat to LSG

Rajasthan Royals (RR) skipper Sanju Samson on Wednesday admitted that his team needs to play ‘better cricket’ following their 10-run defeat to Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) in the Indian Premier League (IPL) in Jaipur.

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RR, looking to chase down a target of 155, started on a positive note, with Yashasvi Jaiswal (44) and Jos Buttler (40) forging an 87-run stand for the opening wicket, but lost their way in the rest of their chase following Jaiswal’s dismissal.

Sanju Samson (2) was run out after a mix-up with Buttler, and apart from Devdutt Padikkal (26), Jaiswal (44) and Buttler (40), most of the batters, including Shimron Hetmyer (2) failed to get going big.

The opening partnership was a big one, but lack of more substantial partnerships hurt RR’s chances.

“Not that great (feeling) after a loss, but it’s okay. We’d have loved to win the first game at Jaipur. We’ll definitely take lessons and move on. With the batting line-up we have, it was a very chaseable score. But they bowled really well, used the conditions really well. (Conditions) Personally I was expecting something like this, bit of slow and low kind of wicket is what I expected and we got that. You need to play some smart cricket and we did that till the ninth over,” said Samson at the post-match presentation ceremony.

Samson said that RR would take ‘lessons’ out of the defeat. “They bowled really well, whenever we tried to go hard at them, I think we lost wickets. 5 overs 50 in this kind of wicket is a bit tough with the way they were bowling. Even if you win or lose a game, you take lessons out of it, that’s the beauty of this game. We’ll be taking lot of lessons out of it. We did a reasonably good job to restrict them to 150.”

“There are lots of lessons in the bowling side as well and in the batting also. We expect much better performance and we all know the standard of cricket we’ve been playing. We have to move forward and play some better cricket,” added Samson.

KL Rahul, the LSG skipper, said that despite being 10 runs short, the Super Giants made up for that with the ball.

“I got hit by one of the throws from my teammates, so clearly doing something wrong as captain. In the 10 over mark, the message me and Kyle sent out was 160 would be a good total on this track, they have some good bowlers as well who exploited the conditions. We fell 10 short but made up with the ball,” said Rahul.

“And there was no dew so made it fair for both teams. We game in here yesterday and saw 180 would be a par score, but the first over from Boult, me and Kyle had a chat and realised this isn’t a 180 wicket. The ball was keeping a bit low, so we gave ourselves time in the powerplay. Maybe if we played a bit better, we might have got 170 as well,” Rahul added.

‘I’m ready to go: Marcus Stoinis’

Marcus Stoinis finished with figures of 2/28 from four overs. Wednesday was his first contribution with the ball in the IPL this season, and when asked if he would bowl more, he said it was upto the skipper KL Rahul to decide on that.

“Nice to get involved with the ball, had no real plans to get Jos out that way but I just used some cricketing smarts and bowled it short into the wicket. We identified this is a difficult wicket, so we realised we don’t need a 50 off 20 balls on this surface. (On whether he will bowl more) You will have to ask the skipper that question, but fitness wise I’m ready to go. All good,” said the Australia all-rounder, who was adjudged Player of the Match.

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