IPL 2020 | Inconsistency cost Rajasthan Royals the season, rues coach Andrew McDonald

Despite showing spark in patches, Rajasthan Royals’ IPL 2020 campaign never really took off and Sunday was arguably their entire season in a nutshell. Chasing 192, RR, after getting off to the most remarkable start - 19/0 in 5 balls - fell like a pack of cards to fold to a season-ending defeat. Their showing on Sunday in Dubai was yet another ‘“if only their batsmen had applied themselves” scenario and the inconsistency in their performance came back to haunt them as, aside from not qualifying for the playoffs, the side ended up finishing 8th in the table.

Speaking in the press conference post the defeat, club coach Andrew McDonald admitted that Rajasthan had themselves to blame and rued the inconsistency showcased by the players. McDonald noted that the side could and should have won at least a couple of more matches, notably the RCB and Delhi fixtures mid-season.

"Some of the cricket we played throughout the tournament was inconsistent. There were a couple where we could have clearly won. Looking back at the RCB game, AB took that game away. Against Delhi also, we weren't able to chase it down,” McDonald said in the press conference.

“We can't really blame the conditions or the venues, we played inconsistent cricket. We won two games in a row and then a few inconsistencies crept in and we couldn't complete the job today.

“The inconsistencies cost us any chance. It was quite frustrating. The style of cricket that we want to play is good enough but history will say that we missed a chance to play in the final. We've only got ourselves to blame.”

Steve Smith, in his interview post the game, spoke about the performance of Jofra Archer being a ‘positive’ and McDonald, in addition to the speedster, lavished praise on young Kartik Tyagi. The RR coach revealed that the management were initially skeptical about how Tyagi would transition but claimed that he was impressed with the nerve shown by the youngster.

"Jofra was outstanding with his economy rates. He's been incredible on the field and stamped his authority on the game early in the tournament when he got his chance with the bat. His all-round game keeps getting better. We had too few contributions around him.

"We weren't sure if Tyagi will be able to take that leap from Under-19 cricket to IPL but he showed he can. He held his nerve and he's going to only get better,” said 39-year-old.