IPL 2020: Virat Kohli delivers a passionate speech in the dressing room after a tragic loss against SRH

Royal Challengers Bangalore’s (RCB) 13-year long wait for the coveted T20 Trophy continues as they suffered a heartbreaking loss against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in the Eliminator of the ongoing 13th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) by 6 wickets. With this defeat, their fifth on a trot, they are out of the tournament and will have to settle with the 4th position.

Just like the previous few games, the RCB batters let their team down as they failed to read the pitch properly and post a decent total for their bowlers to defend. In this highly-anticipated fixture, AB de Villiers emerged as a lone warrior as he smashed 56 off 43 deliveries including 5 boundaries to take the team towards a total of 131/7. Apart from De Villiers only Aaron Finch (32 off 30) and Mohammad Siraj (10* off 7) managed to score in double digits.

Chasing a target of 131 in 20 overs was never difficult for SRH. However, Bangalore’s bowling unit had different plans as they put the opposition in a tough spot by taking early wickets in the game. In such a pressure situation Kane Williamson kept his calm and his knock of 50* off 44 along with Jason Holder’s cameo (24* off 20) helped SRH cement a place in the 2nd Qualifier of IPL 2020 against Delhi Capitals.

Post this painful defeat, RCB skipper Virat Kohli delivered a passionate speech in the dressing room applauding his teammates for a brilliant effort throughout the tournament. He urged them to keep their heads high and take the positives from this season and carry the momentum forward in the next edition.

We spoke of creating memories as a team and I think we have done that a lot this season and when we said that this is probably the best environment we’ve played in for RCB, we’re damn right about it.

It’s been an amazing time together. We came in three weeks before the tournament started got to spend a lot of time with each other got to know each other so well and I think the camaraderie is something that pushed us deep and far into the tournament and something that we can be proud of, hold our head high even the losses that we had we never gave up which I think is the most important thing which probably we haven’t done in the last few seasons.

So there’s a positive already for me there that we’re heading in the right direction and I would just like to thank the support staff as everyone else has and the coaches especially you guys have created a brilliant structure this year and the hard work and the planning and the detail has been outstanding and something that we all thoroughly benefited from

We can be really proud of what we’ve done: Virat Kohli

Further in his speech, Kohli stated that the players should continue enjoying themselves while being on the field to have one hell of a tournament next year. The skipper added that all the players should be proud of what they have achieved in the past seasons.

Next year probably things might be different, might have a few more allowances we never know but still as long as we keep looking forward to coming back together as a group and really enjoying our time together we’ll have one hell of a tournament next year as well,” said the India captain.

We can be really proud of what we’ve done after the few seasons that were tough for us and it’s only down to the character of all of you in the change room so just hold that close in your heart and keep growing from here and believe that we can keep building on from here as a sport