"Hard Pill To Swallow": Steve Smith After AB de Villiers Stuns Rajasthan Royals

AB de Villiers stole the show as he hit an unbeaten 55 runs off 22 deliveries to help Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) clinch a thrilling victory over Rajasthan Royals (RR) in Dubai on Saturday. By the virtue of the victory, RCB inches closer to seal a spot in the IPL 2020 playoffs. The Bangalore franchise have now firmly struck their spot in the third place.

Opting to bat, Rajasthan Royals posted 177/6 in the stipulated 20 overs. Captain Steve Smith shuffled his line-up as he asked Robin Uthappa to open along with Ben Stokes and the Indian batsman delivered. It was a good outing for Smith as well as he returned back to form with 57 runs off 36 balls. All-rounder Chris Morris was the pick of the bowler for RCB with a four-wicket haul.

In the chase, opener Devdutt Padikkal got the team off to a good start with Virat Kohli playing a quick-fire knock and AB de Villiers taking the side home. His unbeaten knock was laced with one boundary and six hits over the fence.

Sure is a hard pill to swallow: Steve Smith

The experiment to bowl Jaydev Unadkat failed for Steve Smith as AB de Villiers smacked him all over the park. Smith said that the loss was a hard pill to swallow and more so as they came close to win a match twice in a row but failed. Smith, however, was happy with his batting performance and enjoyed spending time in the victory.

“Sure is a hard pill to swallow. Just got AB’d there. That’s two in a row we were in the box seat to win but didn’t. Disappointing. I think it was a good score on a slow wicket. I thought we built the pressure pretty well and it took a pretty special innings to take RCB home,” losing captain Smith said at the post match interview.

“We wanted to use Jaydev to the bigger boundary, he bowls a lot of slower stuff into the wicket. Obviously boundary not big enough for AB. [On his batting] Nice to spend a bit of time in the middle and get a bit of rhythm,” he added.

Rajasthan Royals remain at the seventh spot in the IPL 2020 points table with six points.