Faf du Plessis’ Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) lost by 28 runs against the KL Rahul-led Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) in the 15th match of the Indian Premier League 2024 (IPL 2024) on April 2, 2024 at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru. Du Plessis was lucky as the toss as the coin fell in his favor and he decided to invite Lucknow Super Giants to bat first in the match. Both teams made notable changes to their playing with the home team bringing in Reece Topley for Alzarri Joseph and LSG replacing the injured Mohsin Khan with Yash Thakur. Bowling first, RCB bowlers were taken to cleaners by Quinton de Kock and later KL Rahul also joined the party and smoked the bowlers. Glenn Maxwell with his spin-bowling stopped the carnage as he dismissed Rahul for 20 in the 6th over. Soon, Devdutt Padikkal departed for 6 in the 9th over. Then, Marcus Stoinis joined De Kock and duo batter aggressively to push RCB on the backfoot. They added 56 runs together before Maxwell struck again to remove his Australian teammate for 24. In the end, Nicholas Pooran (40) showcased batting brilliance and helped LSG post 181/5 on the board. The top performer for LSG in the batting department was Quinton de Kock, who scored 81 runs off 56 balls while the top wicket-taker for RCB was Glenn Maxwell, who finished with the figures of 2/23. Chasing the target, RCB batters looked clueless against the sheer pace of Mayank Yadav, who rattled the batters with rippers. Mahipal Lomror emerged as the top performer for RCB in the batting department as he smashed 33 runs while batting in the lower order. However, not much support from the other end, meant that RCB were bundled out for 153. From LSG, Mayank Yadav picked up 3 wickets and gave away just 14 runs.

Mistakes like that can cost you in the IPL – Faf du Plessis

Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) skipper Faf du Plessis went all out at the post-match presentation ceremony and he slammed the fielders for doing a poor job against LSG. He said: “Spot on (dropped catches cost us). Two very good players, QdK when was on 25-30 and Nicky P was on 2, 60-65 extra runs, mistakes like that can cost you in the IPL.” Faf du Plessis further lavished rich praise on the LSG express pacer Mayank Yadav, saying that he is highly accurate with his lines and lengths. Faf du Plessis asserted: “It is the new action you haven’t faced before, and if they have pace then you need time to get used to it (about Mayank). But his ability to control length and have accuracy is impressive.” Faf du Plessis then again slammed his bowlers for not being up to the mark in the powerplay overs. He said: “I didn’t think we were very good with our bowling especially in the powerplay, Maxwell brought it back and there were some pleasing signs in the death overs.” Faf du Plessis signed off by bashing his batters for not being able to stitch together good partnerships and opined that they need strong characters in the dressing room. Faf du Plessis said: “You need two guys to bat through and get a partnership which we were not able to do. We need the strong characters in the dressing room to put their hand up.”