R Ashwin said that RR have a tough challenge in hand when they face SRH in the IPL 2024 Qualifier 2 on Friday, May 24 at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. On Wednesday, the Royals beat Faf du Plessis’ RCB by 4 wickets in the Eliminator and stayed alive in the competition.
The Sunrisers will go into the game after losing to Shreyas Iyer’s KKR by 8 wickets in the Qualifier 1 at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. However, Ashwin did not wish to undermine the Sunrisers given their overall form in the ongoing edition of the T20 league.
“SRH have been the team to beat this time in the IPL. They have played fearless cricket and to take them on is going to be a challenge for us, but we will up our best performance,” Ashwin said in a video on IPL’s official website.
Sanju Samson, the RR skipper, in the meantime, admitted that his team was under a bit of pressure after going winless in their last 5 league matches. The captain said that he was overwhelmed to see how the Royals responded in crisis by showing guts and character.
Losing 4 out of 4 and then having the game in Guwahati definitely raised a lot of questions, a lot of doubts were coming up in the dressing room, but I am proud of the way we responded. We wanted to show some character. Each and every one in the team stepped up and I am very happy for them,” he added.
Against RCB, the Royals chased down a challenging target of 173 with 6 balls left in their innings. Ashwin won the Player of the Match award after he finished with figures of 4-0-19-2. Avesh Khan, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Samson, Riyan Parag and Shimron Hetmyer also chipped in with useful contributions.
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