RCB’s Wayne Parnell commended the batting skills of Lucknow Super Giants’ Marcus Stoinis and Nicholas Pooran after their thrilling victory in the IPL 2023 match on April 10. Parnell noted that the duo’s performance was impeccable, as they never seemed to mis-hit a single ball. Lucknow beat RCB by one wicket, thanks to Stoinis’ 65 off 30 and Pooran’s 62 off 19. Despite losing momentum after Pooran’s dismissal in the 17th over, the Giants held their nerves and won off the last ball. At the post-match press conference, Parnell stated:
“It was pretty tense towards the end. Unfortunately, we were on the wrong side of the last ball, but credit to Lucknow. They chased it down really well. A couple of the guys came in, and it looked like they weren’t going to mishit anything. That was probably the difference in the game.
“At Chinnaswamy, chasing is something that teams look to do as the wicket gets better under lights. That was the case this [Monday] evening as well.”
“When Stoinis played the way he played, that allowed guys to come in and take the game on early. Nicholas Pooran did that as well. Some very clean hitting and then a couple of wickets at the backend to kind of bring us back. But, if you look back, if we had an extra 10 runs, that could have been the difference. I still felt it was a decent total, but we had to execute some things.” He further added.
Parnell registered a bowling score of 3/41, while Mohammed Siraj put up an impressive 3/22 despite most other RCB bowlers struggling.
“The wicket was a little bit slow”: Parnell on RCB’s conservative batting approach
Despite only losing two wickets when batting first, many experts believed that Bangalore should have accumulated a higher score than 212. When asked about RCB’s measured batting tactics in their opening innings, Parnell commented:
“You’ll have to ask the coach that one (smiles). The wicket was a little bit slow early on. You could see that with Faf [Du Plessis] and Virat [Kohli], both being stroke players, mistimed a couple of balls. Under lights, it tends to skid on a bit more.
“Even though they started ‘slowly’, Virat played a brilliant knock and having Faf go all the way through, that’s something that any coach would be happy about.”
Du Plessis smashed 79* from 46 deliveries, while Kohli scored 61 from 44 as the RCB openers added 96 runs for the initial wicket.