Rajasthan Royals skipper Riyan Parag brushed off his side’s heavy defeat to Sunrisers Hyderabad, treating it as a small stumble and urging the team to reset immediately. RR were handed a 57-run loss after falling well short in their chase of 217. The blow came right at the start: in the opening over, debutant fast bowler Praful Hinge struck three times, dismissing Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Dhruv Jurel and Lhuan-dre Pretorius in quick succession to leave Rajasthan in trouble from the first few deliveries.
Parag acknowledged that there was little scope to dwell on the setback, pointing to SRH’s execution as the key difference. He also admitted that Rajasthan likely made a few errors in the chase. “Not a lot of time to feel the emotions, to be honest. We lost back-to-back wickets, credit to the way they bowled. Probably a few miscalculations from us, but we will just take this as a blip and not think about it too much.”
The captain also reflected on the conditions at the venue. While he suggested that bowling second might have been the more sensible approach, he stressed that the collapse in the batting phase was ultimately the decisive factor. “(on the pitch) It was pretty good actually. I felt bowling second might have been better, probably because we lost wickets. It was a little sticky with the new ball with the shine on. After the shine was gone, I felt, it slowed down a bit and we could have bowled second, but then that’s again hindsight and we could have batted way better.”
Parag then singled out SRH’s debutant seamers for special praise, highlighting the impact of Praful Hinge and Sakib Hussain. He said their early spells created steady pressure, forcing the batting unit out of rhythm. “Absolutely, I think I’ve not seen them a lot domestically, but I think I played Sakib once when I played against Bihar versus Assam. But they bowled beautifully. I felt the pressure they had with the home crowd supporting and chanting their names and stuff like that. I felt the way they bowled the first four overs, first four, five overs, I think really was beautiful.”
Explaining a tactical decision behind his bowling plans, Parag defended the choice not to use Ravindra Jadeja with the ball. He linked the call to Ishan Kishan’s batting form at the time, saying he preferred not to take that risk. “(on not bowling Jadeja) I felt we started really well. Probably could have done a few things here and there. Jaddu bhai, I don’t know, just split second decision. Ishan was batting really well, so I didn’t want to take that chance. Trusted Bishnoi with the overs. But I felt they were 30 over par for sure with the way the wicket was playing.”
Even after being reduced to 9/5, RR managed to show resilience. A 118-run partnership between Donovan Ferreira and Jadeja helped them claw their way to 159 at the end of their innings, providing a measure of encouragement despite the final margin. Parag pointed to that recovery as evidence of the batting depth within the squad. “As far as batting is concerned, I think being five wickets down for nine runs and still getting 160, that says a lot about the depth of our batting.”
Looking forward, the young captain insisted that the group would regroup quickly ahead of their next assignment. “Absolutely, like I said, it’s just a blip and we move ahead to Kolkata and do something better.”
