First innings we thought that the wicket was very two-paced – Faf du Plessis on loss to KKR

It was an ordinary showdown from the Royal Challengers Bengaluru at Chinnaswamy as they were outmuscled by the touring Knights in a forgettable evening. Virat Kohli played a fine knock of 83 while he had support from Cameron Green, Glenn Maxwell and Dinesh Karthik. However, that wasn’t enough for the Royal Challengers to keep the Knights away from a win.

The RCB skipper, Faf du Plessis had another silent day in the office with a score of just eight alongside his name. Talking at the post-match conference, Faf spoke at length about the track being pretty two-paced and how it underwent a facelift for the batters in the second half. He also spoke about the introduction of Vyshak Vijaykumar as an impact sub and how he impressed everyone in the dugout.

Faf said, “Strange one, first innings we thought that the wicket was very two-paced, you could see that when the guys bowled the cutters, back of a length, the guys really struggled. We thought it was a decent score knowing that it gets a little bit easier in the evening, there was a little bit of dew that came in. Looking at the way we batted in the first innings, even if you have someone in there, Virat was struggling to hit the ball just because there was lack of pace and the two-paceness.”

Shedding some light about KKR’s powerplay, Faf said, “You can always know after the game, we can say perhaps try one or two things but the way the two of them (Narine and Salt) were striking the ball, some really good batting there, they put pressure on our bowlers. They hit strong cricket shots and pretty much took the game away. With Narine there, you can't really go to spin, you want to use pace upfront. That's also a really good match-up for Salt and the way he plays. They were excellent, and really broke the game in the first six overs.”

He further added, “We've tried the spinning options with Maxi, the finger-spinners seem to be effective here, but at night there wasn't too much spin, With left-hand, right-hand combination, it's one of those things, you can bowl a spinner. But as you saw when Venky was playing against the left-arm spinner, you feel like it's an easy hit on a small boundary to hit with the spin. Ideally you want someone who can spin the ball both ways but with the set-up of our team tonight, we didn't have that option.”

He eventually concluded with a note of praise for Vyshak, stating, “Very good, he hasn't had opportunities. We had a look in the first innings and we thought about bringing in Karn Sharma. But we felt someone who could bowl really good slower balls is probably the most difficult bowler to face on this pitch. Dre Russ probably bowled 80% of his balls cutters. We took some learnings from that and he was the best bowler of the evening.