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IPL 2020: AB de Villiers’ heartfelt message for RCB fans after team’s exit
IPL 2020: After RCB lost to SRH and were out of the tournament, AB de Villiers apologised to the fans for not making it to the finals.
Royal Challengers Bangalore were knocked out of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 on Friday night as they lost the eliminator to Sunrisers Hyderabad in Abu Dhabi. The 6-wicket defeat shattered their hopes of maiden title win. (IPL 2020 Full Coverage)
The Sunrisers outplayed the Royal Challengers across departments. After put to bat first, Virat Kohli & Co managed to post an inadequate total of 131 runs, after losing 7 wickets. Later, their bowlers failed to defend the same.
RCB wicketkeeper-batsman AB de Villiers was the only player who held his fort against the SRH bowling attack. Battling all alone, he contributed with an innings of 56 runs off 43 deliveries. However, that wasn’t enough to challenge SRH.
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After the match ended, the RCB players gathered in the dressing room for one final time in this season. While skipper Kohli recalled the positives and delivered a passionate speech, de Villiers apologised to the fans for not making it to the finals.
The moment was captured on the camera and shared on the RCB’s official Twitter handle. In the video, De Villiers stated that the unit is hopeful of making a stronger comeback in the next season.
“To all our RCB fans, thank you so much for the support. Wish you guys were here throughout the tournament, we could’ve done with a bit of support from you guys in the stadium but it wasn’t meant to be. Hopefully next time. Sorry about not going all the way. We gave it our best shot and we had a lot of fun.
“There’s a lot of positives which we will take on board moving forward. Thank you for supporting us and always being behind us,” said de Villiers.
Here’s the video:
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Captain Kohli agreed to the fact that they lost the momentum towards the back end of the league. However, he believes that there are many positives to be taken forward.
“I think we played some good cricket and fell off at the back end. Probably we didn’t play our best game since losing to Mumbai Indians. We would have loved to go even further as fans the wanted. But some positives in the season. Like Devdutt, stepping up for the team and having a great season. And Siraj coming back nicely after a tough season last year… A lot of positives that definitely we can take forward,” said Kohli in the video.
