Lucknow Super Giants skipper K.L. Rahul said his batters will have to find ways to get "a good start when there is movement with the ball" after their 24-run defeat to Rajasthan Royals in Match 63 of IPL 2022. Chasing a par score of 178/6 in 20 overs built on useful knocks from Yashasvi Jaiswal (41), Sanju Samson (32) and Devdutt Padikkal (39), Lucknow were restricted to 154/8 in 20 overs despite a half-century by Deepak Hooda (59) and his 65-run partnership with Krunal Pandya (25).
"We need to find ways to get a good start when there is movement with the ball. Executing what we want to is the aim. Holding our nerve and give ourselves a chance to play out the new ball or play out a good spell. There's often enough time to make up and go big from there," Rahul said at the post-match presentation on Sunday. Rahul said the Brabourne pitch was better than the Pune pitch, which was harder. "The pitch at Pune was harder. This was a better pitch. There was seam movement earlier and they bowled well.
Losing two wickets was bad, we've lost games because of that before," he said. Rahul blamed poor work by his batters while chasing a gettable target as the reason for their defeat. "It was a gettable target, a good pitch. The new ball was assisting the bowlers. We were good with the ball, the batting group has not performed collectively in a few games. We have to go back and get better." Rahul said as his team remained on 16 points from 13 matches as Rajasthan Royals leapfrogged them to the second spot on the points table with a better net run rate.