Rajasthan Royals captain Riyan Parag (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Rajasthan Royals captain Riyan Parag He did not give much importance to his team’s huge defeat at the hands of Sunrisers Hyderabad and called it just a small setback and urged his team to move forward rapidly. RR suffered a crushing defeat by 57 runs after being bowled out early while chasing the target of 217 runs. The damage was done in the very first over when debutant fast bowler Prafulla Hinz left Rajasthan in trouble by dismissing Vaibhav Suryavanshi, Dhruv Jurel and Luan-Dre Pretorius. Reflecting on the defeat, Parag admitted that the team had little time to dwell on emotions and acknowledged SRH’s strong performance with the ball. “To be honest, there is not much time to feel emotions. We lost two wickets in a row, which is thanks to their bowling.” We probably had some misunderstandings, but we’ll just take it as a mistake and not think too much about it.” Parag also assessed the pitch conditions and suggested that chasing might have been a better option, although he admitted that RR’s batting collapse had hurt them more than anything. “(On the pitch) it was really very good. I thought it could have been better to bowl second, maybe because we lost wickets. It was a bit sticky with the shine of the new ball. After the shine went off, I felt, it got a bit slow and we could have bowled second, but then again that’s a bad idea and we could have batted better.” The RR captain had special praise for SRH’s budding seamers, especially Prafulla Hinge and Saqib Hussain, who together demolished the batting line-up. “Of course, I think I haven’t seen him too much at the domestic level, but I think I played Shakib once when we played against Bihar versus Assam. But he bowled brilliantly. I felt how much pressure he was under with the home crowd supporting him and chanting his name and things like that. I thought the way he bowled the first four overs, first four, five overs, I thought was really beautiful.” Parag also explained his strategic call of not using Ravindra Jadeja with the ball, referring to the form Ishan Kishan as a major factor. “(On not bowling Jadeja) I thought we started really well. Maybe a few things could have been done here and there. Jaddu Bhai, I don’t know, just distributed the second decision. Ishan was batting really well, so I didn’t want to take that chance. Trusted Bishnoi in the overs. But the way the wicket was playing, I thought they were definitely worth 30 runs.” Despite being reduced to 9/5, RR showed some fight through a 118-run partnership between Donovan Ferreira and Jadeja, which eventually reached 159. Parag took this as a positive, highlighting the depth in the batting unit. “As far as batting is concerned, I think to score 160 with five wickets down for nine runs, it says a lot about the depth of our batting.” Looking ahead, the young captain remained optimistic, insisting that the team will soon regroup for their next game. “Of course, like I said, it’s just a setback and we will move on to Kolkata and do something better.”