Royal Challengers Bengaluru faced a disappointing defeat at the hands of Sunrisers Hyderabad in the Match 66 of the Indian Premier League 2025 at the Bharat Ratna Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana Stadium, Lucknow.
RCB, who have already qualified for the Playoffs, would have solidified their chances of finishing in the top two, but with one more league stage game to go, there will now be fierce competition with for the first and second spots, respectively.
RCB’s wicketkeeper-batter Phil Salt, who opened alongside Virat Kohli, helped give a perfect start to the side as they had to chase down a 232-run target. The duo made 80 runs in just seven overs, but unfortunately, Virat fell prey to Harsh Dubey and that is where the downfall of the Rajat Patidar-led batting unit started. Salt gave it his all with 62 off 32 balls, but lack of support from the other end, meant RCB fell short by 42 runs at the end.
Salt opened up after the loss, and said that he does feel a bit of disappointment to be on the losing side, but he won’t mind losing a league stage game rather than the one in the Playoffs. Determined to lift the trophy for RCB, Salt said that there are multiple ways of looking at the loss, and he looks at it as still a positive thing to be happening.
“I mean that’s one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it is, you don’t mind having this game not in the playoffs. You can take it as a disappointment or you can take it for what it is. We’ve qualified but we’ve lost the game. No one likes to lose games of cricket. I’m hating the fact that we lost, as will everybody else in an RCB shirt, but we’d rather have this now than in an Eliminator,” said Salt after the loss against SRH as quoted by Cricbuzz.
“We did a lot of good things (while) chasing it down. Obviously, we got it to a point at 15 overs where every single person in our dressing room would believe that we’re going to win that game. Obviously, the margins are most of the time fine, but the margins for failure were very fine tonight. You hit an over of 20 at that time and you go a long way in icing the game. Cricket can be like that sometimes. We’ll have a look at what we did well and what we can do better,” the Englishman added.
In the Playoffs, you’ve got to play in a carefree manner: Salt
The stumper-batter further said after a team has qualified for the Playoffs, the goal for all the players is simple and clear – to play in the best interest of the team.
“I can’t sit here and tell you that we prefer to finish first, second, third or fourth. We’ve qualified for the playoffs, and once you’re in the playoffs, you’ve got to go and play in a carefree manner and do what you can to win the trophy. We’re not too far ahead of ourselves at the moment with that thinking. In a few days, we’ll be playing here again against Lucknow in a game that we want to win and show everyone how good we are. It’s pretty simple, pretty straightforward, we’re just looking at the next game,” he further said.
Salt, who had to miss a few games earlier in the season owing to illness, feels that he is glad to be healthy back again, and even happier that the tournament could resume soon after facing a short little suspension following the execution of Operation Sindoor by the Indian government.
“It’s a funny one. When you’re ill, you sit on the bed and wonder if you’re ever going to feel better again. You think of all those things you took for granted when you were healthy and all that sort of stuff. As a group, we hadn’t played cricket for three weeks, and I don’t think I played in a month, which is a long time. More than anything else, I’m just glad that I’m healthy and playing another game of cricket,” the RCB cricketer concluded.