My elusive IPL hundred, I feel it is around the corner: Faf du Plessis

It was an emphatic win for the Royal Challengers Bangalore as they sealed their fifth victory of the season, surpassing the likes of the Lucknow Super Giants in an emphatic all-round display that needed some doing but was done nevertheless.

Faf du Plessis played a captain’s knock as he belted out a 64-ball-96 while it was Shahbaz Ahmed who played the perfect anchor at the other end, steadying a rocked ship and then changing it into sheer bouts of devastation for the debutants. The duo stitched together a crucial stand of 70 runs.

Talking about his batting after the game, Faf du Plessis said, “Because of the nature of the ground, it's quite big so you run a lot of twos. Towards the end, it can get a little bit tiring but it's a good way to keep your fitness up. My elusive IPL hundred... I feel it is around the corner.”

On being awarded the player of the match, Faf also said, “Amazingly tonight we were in trouble, as we were in the last three or four games, but we have a knack of someone getting through it, stabilizing the innings, having composure and then towards the end we're a very dangerous team. Today, I'm grateful that I could do it. I was hungry for some runs. I wanted to make a big impact because the last few games had been quiet for me.”

He shed some valuable light on how he approached the game, “I went through my own processes and blueprint for scoring runs so I had a clear mental image going into this match and glad that it paid off. [I was tiring] but I was still in a mode where I felt I could still hit the ball. If you bowled slow into the wicket to the big boundary, the ball stopped quite a bit so you never felt like you had enough power to clear the boundary.”

He concluded on a positive note, saying, “I think it was evident from everyone that big boundary if you bowled well it was difficult to score boundaries. There was quite a bit happening in those first three or four overs. They got us in trouble and somehow, we found a way and just stuck right through the innings. But the bowlers are really on the top of their game."

If Faf led the charge with the bat in his arms, it was Hazlewood who showed the path with the ball in his arms. Harshal Patel took a banging for sure but he got the all-important scalp of KL Rahul and was perfectly supported by the cameos of Glenn Maxwell and Shahbaz Ahmed whose stringent showdowns kept the runs in check despite the presence of big-hitters in the Lucknow arsenal.

Josh was vocal about his rampant performance as quoted, “It's always a challenge there at the end when batters are coming hard but we obviously had that big side there to try to use and I thought we used it pretty well all night.”

“Faf's been brewing. He's had a few lean games coming off but tonight he took his time and kept the score going along and finished with a bang so credit to him. [On the ball not called a wide before Stoinis wicket] I tried to turn around and get back to my mark as quick as I could. I got pretty lucky on that one so I might have to get him a beer after that," concluded the tall Aussie fast bowler.