Need To Lift Our Standards, Says Rajasthan Royals' Captain Samson

Rajasthan Royals skipper Sanju Samson blamed his batters and bowlers for a woeful performance as they slumped to a 7-wicket defeat against Sunrisers Hyderabad here on Monday.

The Royals were eyeing a score closer to 180 with Samson going great guns after scoring his half-century, hitting some powerful shots all around. But they could manage only 18 runs in the last three overs and eventually ended with 164/5 in 20 overs.

Sanju was unmistakably unhappy with his batters as they lost their way in the final three overs. He rued the fact that they fell short by around 10-20 runs while batting.

"The wicket was sticky, and they were bowling well. We could have got 10 or 20 more actually. The last overs was the difference - you can say that. I wanted to keep going, but we kept losing one or two wickets," Samson said after the match.

Chasing 165, Sunrisers Hyderabad paced their innings well. Jason Roy, brought into the side in place of non-performing opener David Warner, scored 60 and with skipper Kane Williamson holding the innings together with an unbeaten 51, SRH reaching 167/3 with nine balls to spare, for a comfortable victory.

Samson felt it was a defendable total and said his bowlers could have done better.

"It was a decent score. We got the target which we were aiming for after the time-out. We definitely need to work a lot on our batting and bowling... We need to be at our best each and every ball. We need to lift our standards," said Samson.

In the UAE leg of IPL 2021, Rajasthan started with a two-run victory against Punjab Kings but then lost by 33-runs to Delhi Capitals in their second match. And on Monday, they slumped to a seven-wicket defeat against SRH.

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Rajasthan next play Royal Challengers Bangalore on Wednesday (Sept 29) as they try and maintain their chances of making it to the knockout stage.