Their third defeat in four matches may have been little less than shattering for the Royal Challengers, but skipper Rahul Dravid tried to find positives from their close loss against Chennai Super Kings here on Monday night.
"It's not nice to lose anytime, but we were in contention. There is still a lot of cricket left and hopefully we will get our act together," said Dravid in his post match comments.
Like in the previous match against Rajasthan Royals, the Challengers were guilty of throwing away too many wickets at crucial junctures. "We didn't finish off well and kept losing wickets. We needed one big over, but it never came," rued the right-hander. While maintaining that it was hard to pick a particular moment that turned the tide in rivals' favour, Dravid said the loss of Mark Boucher and himself probably did them in.
On his personal form — second first-ball duck in two consecutive matches — Dravid said it's a bit disappointing.
On the team composition the 35-year-old felt he went in with the best possible combination. "You can't fit everyone. We went with the best combination we thought would do the job for us on the day. Anil (Kumble) pulled up stiff after Saturday's match and Akhil (who worsened his groin injury) was declared fit by the physio in the morning," he explained.
Super Kings' skipper MS Dhoni said he was happy to see his team win after a close contest. "They were batting well, but we got to swing the ball after the 14th or 15th over and capitalised on that," he pointed out.
On Muttiah Muralitharan's exclusion, Dhoni said he took the decision based on the nature of the wicket. "It looked a good pitch to bat on, the ball was coming on nicely on to the bat and I thought it better to go with quicker bowlers than the slow bowlers," he remarked.
