‘Very good batting performance by RCB and one of our poorer bowling performances’ – SRH coach Vettori’s assessment after IPL 2026 curtain raiser

Sunrisers Hyderabad’s head coach Daniel Vettori admitted that his team had a poor outing with the ball against defending champions RCB in the IPL 2026 opener on Saturday, March 28, at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru.

Vettori said that indiscipline with the ball allowed Virat Kohli and Devdutt Padikkal to score freely, and the SRH bowlers couldn’t build pressure after getting Phil Salt out for a cheap score.

SRH posted 201/9 in their 20 overs after Ishan Kishan (80 off 38 balls) and Aniket Verma (43 off 18 balls) played enthralling knocks. However, Kohli and Padikkal smashed 69* (38) and 61 (26), respectively, to take RCB home in 15.4 overs, with six wickets left in the tank.

“I think we understand where the game’s gone and how destructive that RCB batting line-up is. You have to get a good start, which we did against [Phil] Salt, but then I just think we weren’t at our best with the ball, we weren’t as disciplined as we needed to be, and we gave a lot of scoring opportunities to Virat and Padikkal, who played exceptionally well,” Vettori said after the match (via ESPNcricinfo).

“I thought the way his [Padikkal’s] intent, when he came out, put us right back under pressure, where we should have been able to maintain a little bit more after getting that important wicket of Salt. So it was a very good batting performance by RCB and one of our poorer bowling performances,” the former New Zealand captain added.

You don’t want to have a rusty performance because of how important every game is in the IPL: Vettori

Vettori explained the importance of every game in the IPL. He also lauded RCB star Jacob Duffy, who bowled a fantastic spell with the new ball on his IPL debut, bagging three wickets inside the power play.

“I think we learned a lot from how RCB bowled and what was effective and what wasn’t, and obviously we discussed that, but we just weren’t able to implement that. You don’t want to have a rusty performance because of how important every game is in the IPL, particularly how to start,” Vettori said.

“But today was one of our challenging bowling displays. We saw at the back end when we started to go back to our usual disciplines that we could actually be effective and take some wickets, but I think we just missed our lengths too much. Duffy, in particular, showed the length to bowl on that surface,” he added.