Bangalore: 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 here Wednesday night after KXIP lost to RCB by 17 runs.
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,” he added.
“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.
On winning three out of their remaining games now, Ashwin said it is important to take one game at a time.
“I think we have a couple of more players who get fit by the time we go to Hyderabad which will be a good boost for us. You can look at it as three out of three now, but it is very important to see that we have to win one at a time. The last two games are home games for us where we played reasonably well,” he said.
“We have played some good cricket to actually end up only winning five games in the season. It is not quite pleasing that way, but going into the next three games, I am pretty confident that we can turn it around,” he added.
PTI
