The Royal Challengers Bengaluru broke the decibel barrier at Chinnaswamy last night as they rocked the Chennai Super Kings to qualify for the play-offs, chronicling a turnaround like none other. From just one win in the first seven games to six wins in the last six fixtures, RCB defied reckless odds to be a part of the final four of IPL 2024.

Captain Faf du Plessis led from the very front in the do-or-die clash as he scored an excellent half-century up front while backing that up with a handful of bold decisions and a couple of incredible grabs that turned the game over in RCB’s favour. He won the Player of the Match award and made no attempt whatsoever to hide his elations at the post-match awards.

Faf said, “What a night. Unbelievable and such a great atmosphere, such a pleasure to finish off the season at home with a win. Batting first, I think it was the hardest pitch I have ever played on in T20s. Myself and Virat were talking about 140-150 after we came back from the rain break. The communication from the umpires was there was a lot of rain on the pitch, they wanted to push the game and that makes sense. When we came back, my goodness, I was telling Mitch Santner it was like a day 5 Test match at Ranchi and to get 200 on that was unbelievable.”

Shedding further light on the conditions, Faf added, “The last 6 games the batters have batted with good intent and good strike-rate. We were slow earlier on and we wanted more intent and that was awesome. We were defending 175, it got a bit close, at one stage, with MS there, I thought, oh dear, he has done it so many times. The way we bowled with the wet ball was unbelievable, we tried to change it.”

Faf reserved the highest praise for the Man of the moment, Yash Dayal who defended 17 runs in the final over from allowing CSK to qualify despite going for a maximum on the very first ball.

The captain added, “I dedicate this Man of the Match to Yash Dayal. The way he bowled was unbelievable. For a man who's fairly new, he deserves it. Pace off is the best option on this pitch and trust your skills and enjoy, this is what you trained for. The yorker did not work the 1st ball and he went back to pace off and it worked unbelievably well.”

He concluded with a very special message for the fans, stating, “It's crazy, even when we weren't winning the fans were here. We in the changeroom felt it was something we had to get right. Coming here tonight, it was set up nicely, CSK v RCB, unbelievable atmosphere and we as a team will do a lap of honour to thank the crowd for the support. It's really important that we enjoy this, great 6 games in a row and the first goal in the IPL is to get into the knockouts and we have done that, enjoy this but get back to work tomorrow.”