‘To be honest…’: Riyan Parag breaks silence after heavy defeat to SRH
Riyan Parag termed Rajasthan Royals’ heavy loss to Sunrisers Hyderabad a “blip” after a dramatic top-order collapse. He credited SRH’s debutant pacers for their impact, reflected on tactical decisions, and praised his team’s fightback after being 9/5. Parag remained optimistic, backing RR to recover quickly and perform better in their next match.
Rajasthan Royals captain Riyan Parag played down his side’s heavy defeat to Sunrisers Hyderabad, calling it just a minor setback and urging his team to move on quickly. RR were handed a crushing 57-run loss after being blown away early in the chase of 217. The damage was done in the very first over when debutant pacer Praful Hinge struck three times, removing Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Dhruv Jurel and Lhuan-dre Pretorius to leave Rajasthan reeling.
Reflecting on the loss, Parag admitted that the team had little time to dwell on emotions and acknowledged SRH’s strong execution with the ball. "Not a lot of time to feel the emotions, to be honest. We lost back-to-back wickets, credit to the way they bowled.
Probably a few miscalculations from us, but we will just take this as a blip and not think about it too much. " Parag also assessed the pitch conditions, suggesting that chasing might have been the better option, although he conceded that RR’s batting collapse hurt them more than anything else. "(on the pitch) It was pretty good actually.
I felt bowling second might have been better, probably because we lost wickets. It was a little sticky with the new ball with the shine on. After the shine was gone, I felt, it slowed down a bit and we could have bowled second, but then that's again hindsight and we could have batted way better.