Skipper Faf du Plessis admitted that Royal Challengers Bangalore missed the services of their pacer Harshal Patel in their defeat against Chennai Super Kings in the IPL 2022 on Tuesday. Notably, Harshal was not part of RCB's playing XI against Chennai at the Dr DY Patil Sports Academy as the pacer had to leave the IPL bio bubble to return home after news of his sister's tragic death. Sources in RCB had said that Harshal exited the bubble on Sunday after the game against Mumbai Indians on Saturday. It is not yet clear how long Harshal will remain unavailable for the RCB team.
Faf du Plessis in the post-match presentation said: "First 7-8 overs were pretty good, then there was a period from 8-14 where Dube took the spinners on. That period, whatever we tried didn't work. In order to chase down such a big score, you need one of the first four to set the foundation. We didn't have that. CSK used their spinners well on a pitch that had some grip. The way we came back was credit to the depth."
"You see the value of Harshal, and what he offers. He has the ability to stop the game. We missed that tonight, we had a similar tone to the bowling. We lacked the variety we needed in our attack. Hopefully, we can have him soon again. Impressed with the way Prabhudessai played the way he did on debut," the South African added.
Harshal Patel was IPL's leading wicket-taker in the 2021 season and took 32 wickets. He also excelled in RCB's previous match against Mumbai Indians and took two wickets for 23 runs.
Coming to the match, brilliant knocks by Shivam Dube and Robin Uthappa were backed by courageous bowling performance as Chennai Super Kings completed a comfortable 23 runs victory over Royal Challengers Bangalore in their IPL 2022 match on Tuesday.
Robin Uthappa played his IPL career-best inning of 88 while Shivam Dube smashed a thrilling 95* as the pair stitched a mammoth partnership of 165 runs to help CSK reach the highest total of the IPL 2022 -- 216/4. Among bowlers, Maheesh Theekshana was the star for CSK as he scalped four wickets while their skipper Ravindra Jadeja took three to completely dismantle the chase of RCB.
This is CSK's first win after five matches in the IPL 2022 while for RCB this is their only second defeat.