He scored 76 off 36 balls, his team needed only 58 from the last five overs with six wickets at their disposal and yet they lost the match. Glenn Maxwell was understandably disappointed with the Royal Challengers Bangalore’s eight-run loss to Chennai Super Kings on Monday.

In reply to Chennai’s mammoth 226/6, RCB responded with 218/8, with as many as 33 sixes being hit in the game.

“It was a pretty exciting game of cricket regardless of how you look at it,” Maxwell said after the match.

“There’s always going to be a winner or loser. Unfortunately, we just fell a little bit short. It’s a little bit disappointing. We did so well to get so close and we were in the position where we probably should have won the game.”

The Australian said that if he or his skipper, Faf du Plessis, had stayed a little bit longer at the crease, the result would have been different.

“I suppose if one of us was there a little bit longer... We were trying to get as hard as we could to get the run rate under 10 and make it a little bit easier at the back end.”

He also said both Dinesh Karthik (28 off 14 balls) and Shahbaz Ahmed (12 of 10 balls) played their roles well and that Chennai’s Sri Lankan pacer Matheesha Pathirana’s brilliance stopped them from winning. “I thought DK and Shahbaz batted really well. We were still in the game all the way through right till the end. I thought Pathirana, he executed absolutely brilliantly, he bowled a couple of really crucial overs.”

For Chennai, Devon Conway (83 off 45 balls), Shivam Dube (52 off 27) and Moeen Ali (19 not out off 9), all left-handers, did the bulk of the scoring. “I think with short boundaries (at the Chinnaswamy Stadium), they played heavy left-handers,” said Maxwell.

Written with inputs from PTI