IPL 2020 | Terrible feeling to lose three in a row, states AB de Villiers 

With 14 points after 10 games, Royal Challengers Bangalore would have thought that making it to the top two won't be a big ask but things have gone awry for them as they have lost three back-to-back games now after Sunrsiers Hyderabad outplayed them in Sharjah on Saturday by five wickets, more importantly, winning the game with 35 balls to spare, which put RCB's net-run-rate in negative. Now, they will need to win their last game against Delhi Capitals on Monday or else there can be a scenario where they fail to even make it to the playoffs. 

AB de Villiers asserted that it was a terrible feeling to lose three games in a row but in a tourney like IPL, anything can happen, so they need to come with all guns blazing against Delhi, in what is touted to be a virtual quarterfinal. 

"It's a terrible feeling to lose three in a row, you never want to do that. But that's the nature of this tournament, anything can happen: if you lose three in a row, you can win three in a row as well. The Delhi game is a big game we all know that. We're going to have to come out with our best cricket on the day. If we do, things will look up very well for us," de Villiers said in the post-match presser. 

One of the turning points in the game was the dismissal of set de Villiers and Philippe in space of five deliveries as it turned the tide in favour of SRH completely. ABD also reckoned that it cost the team at least 20-30 runs. 

"It cost us 20-30 runs now if you look at it. At the end of the day, it might have not been enough anyway. The field got very wet in the second innings which changed the conditions quite a bit and maybe 140 would have been short as well.

De Villiers was full of praise for SRH bowlers, who were brilliantly led by seasoned Sandeep Sharma in the Powerplay as he sent back Devdutt and Kohli and then Rashid Khan, who asserted control in the middle-overs, strangulating de Villiers before taking out Philippe. The Proteas legend noted that Hyderabad bowlers didn't make mistakes and there weren't many boundary balls.  

"Yes, we were initially talking about 160 which I think was a bit high. Right at the end there we were starting to talk about 140 would be a good score. Credit to them they bowled exceptionally well. From the word go they didn't give us a lot of boundary balls. Their seamers particularly started well in the PowerPlay. They didn't make a lot of mistakes. After the PowerPlay it didn't get much easier with Rashid, who didn't bowl a lot of bad balls either tonight. I think they applied a lot of pressure."

From a batting paradise, Sharjah wicket has completely changed and is now playing low and slow, giving plenty of chances to bowlers, to assert their dominance. AB also felt the same as he said that the wicket was very slow and difficult to bat on. 

"The Sharjah wicket was very slow, the outfield was slow as well so punching through covers didn't go for four, it went for one or two. That also put a lot of pressure. I thought they were quite boring out there which was what was required on this wicket. There was enough in the wicket to do the basics well, they hit top of the wicket with the odd cutter on a good length. They backed that up with very good fielding."