 "IPL 2025: RR captain Riyan Parag defends decision to bowl first, blames bowlers' execution for SRH record total")
Rajasthan Royals (RR) stand-in captain Riyan Parag had no qualms about his team bowling first in their IPL 2025 opener against Sunrisers Hyderabad, despite conceding 286 runs. It was the second-highest total in IPL history, as Ishan Kishan smashed a century and SRH broke their own record .
Parag is captaining RR in the first three matches of IPL 2025 as regular skipper Sanju Samson is currently not 100% match fit. His captaincy debut at Royals, however, could not have got off to a worse start as Hyderabad once again came close to scoring 300 in a single innings, supported by Kishan’s 106 not out.
RR gave a tough fight later on with Dhruv Jurel making 70, Samson scoring 66, Shimron Hetmyer adding 42 and Shubham Dubey contributing 32 not out.
Parag defends bowling first decision after SRH loss
Reflecting on the 44-run defeat , captain Parag said the Royals lacked execution with bowling and defended the decision to bowl first.
“Tough, as I’d expected. Credit to SRH, but we could’ve executed better. We’ll sit down and chat about how we could do better. I feel collectively, we took the decision to bowl, it was the right decision, we were neither here nor there with the ball, could’ve done better,” Parag said in the post-match presentation.
“We could’ve restricted them a little lesser at the toss, I said 200 something like that, 220-240 would’ve been a good score to chase down.”
Parag added that the fightback from the batting line-up as they scored 242 together was a positive takeaway for the team. He was also impressed with Tushar Deshpande and Sandeep Sharma’s bowling as they combined for four wickets.
Impact Shorts
More Shorts“Some of the batters looked really great - Sanju bhaiyya, Shubham, Hettie. With the ball, Tushar, Sandeep - they bowled well. Wins or loss, we take the learnings and forget the result.”
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