Bengaluru: Kings XI Punjab captain Ravichandran Ashwin played down the animated reaction from his Royal Challengers Bangalore counterpart Virat Kohli after taking his catch near the boundary rope, saying both of them react out of passion.
With 27 runs needed from the final over, Ashwin hit the first ball for a six, but on the very next delivery, he hit one straight to Kohli at long-on off Umesh Yadav’s bowling. Kohli celebrated in his typical usual self, giving Ashwin a fiery send-off.
Ashwin, on his part, was also seen throwing his gloves in the dugout in anger.
“I just played with passion, so does he (Virat). That’s it. As simple as that,” Ashwin said at the post-match press conference on Wednesday night after KXIP lost to RCB by 17 runs.
The KXIP skipper said his team failed to come good during crunch situations. “Three overs for 60 odd runs wasn’t desirable, but we were in the chase all along and I thought we couldn’t finish it off in crunch situation. That is what you back the senior players to do. Didn’t quite turn out the way we wanted. That is exactly how that is gone for us the entire tournament.
“Whenever we played those crucial moments, we won, and whenever we haven’t, we have lost it, because the games are really really tight for us,” said Ashwin.
The 32-year-old said KXIP lost the plot in middle overs despite Nicholos Pooran and David Miller bringing them back into the game. “When you chase down 200, you ideally like one of your batsmen to make 70-80. We were not in it. We were 105 in 10 overs or something like that. We lost momentum similar to what RCB did in middle overs, but I thought Nicholos Pooran played really well and he got us back into the game. I thought we were cruising at 4 overs 45 or 46 needed. From there on, it is quite disappointing that we could not finish the game on this ground,” he said.
