Can't afford to get too far ahead: Stoinis

Royal Challengers Bangalore have finally got a taste of victory. All-rounder Marcus Stoinis, who completed the chase along with AB de Villiers against KXIP, said they were relieved but mindful of not going ahead of themselves.

The Australian, who hit an unbeaten 28 off 16, put an end to RCB’s run of six successive defeats and helped them grab their first points of the edition.

Stoinis said during his conversation with De Villiers in the middle, they put emphasis on running between the wickets. "We were just talking about the fact that it doesn't need to be boundaries, make sure we run hard when we hit it to the sweepers on the boundary. The fact that once we did hit a couple of boundaries, all the fielders went right on to the fence and they are long boundaries out there. So we knew that when we didn't hit it out of the middle we still had an option to take two,” he said.

"The fact that I'm pretty familiar with this ground - I've played here for three years - I sort of had a plan on how I wanted to go tonight. But the more comforting fact is batting with someone like AB de Villiers. That makes it a bit easier.”

Stoinis praised the effort of the bowling group. “Our seam bowlers did really well because they got hit early on but all of them brought it back and had good spells and good parts to their bowling. And then our spinners controlled the game in the middle overs.”

“Interestingly, a few of our wickets came after we got hit for sixes, which shows that the team had some good fight in them tonight.

“It is just about each game now, we can’t afford to get too far ahead of ourselves, it is good to get started, we will take next game as it comes and hopefully we will win a few on the trot. It’s still a long season,” he said.

Meanwhile, Punjab bowling coach Ryan Harris said they were 20 runs short. He credited RCB bowlers for adapting to the conditions and restricting Chris Gayle, who batted through the innings to carry Punjab to 173/4.

“I was speaking to the guys (and felt that) the wicket slowed up a bit through the middle,” said Harris.

"The RCB bowlers adapted pretty well and changed the pace on the ball. We've been in situations a few times now where we were four down and end up probably 20 short of where we really should have been. Saying that, it was a pretty good innings from Chris Gayle. I thought he led the team really well (with his batting).”