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Royal Challengers Bangalore skipper Faf du Plessis made a critical assessment of his side's performance in the IPL this season, saying it "wasn't one of the best teams in the competition" and "didn't deserve to be in semi-final".
RCB's campaign in the IPL ended prematurely yet again with Shubman Gill's blazing century helping Gujarat Titans to a six-wicket victory in Bengaluru on Sunday.
RCB have never won an IPL trophy and it would have rankled du Plessis all the more as, despite leading the run-getters' chart, his efforts went in vain.
"I am so disappointed that our season ends there. If we take a hard look at ourselves, we'll be honest in saying that we weren't one of the best teams in the competition," said du Plessis, who took over as RCB captain this season.
"We were lucky that there were some really good performances throughout the season but, as a whole (and) as a team, we probably don't deserve to be in the semi-final, if you look at the period of 15-14 games," said the South African in a post-match video posted by RCB on Monday.
A win for RCB would have denied Mumbai Indians a spot in the playoffs but GT, thanks to Gill's heroics, chased down a competitive 198 set by the home team with five balls to spare.
"It (defeat) still hurts. I mean, we tried really hard tonight (Sunday) and unfortunately just fell short. Looking at some real positives in the form of Maxi (Glenn Maxwell) this year, the partnerships we had between myself and Virat (Kohli)... a 50-run partnership in probably every game, the consistency was remarkable.
"(Pacer Mohammed) Siraj had a great campaign, so some really, really high positives and some areas in the game where we were consistently not great, I think," added du Plessis.
RCB head coach Sanjay Bangar said the team's early exit despite some outstanding performances from Kohli, du Plessis and Siraj was difficult to comprehend.
"It is indeed very disappointing because there were some outstanding performances. We had to finish a couple of close games but couldn't. We found ourselves in a very tight corner towards the end but (it) doesn't take away anything from the guys who preformed."
Kohli ended up with two centuries and six half-centuries, while Faf scored eight half-tons, though the poor performance of the middle order ultimately cost them the season.
However, Bangar said that he was happy the team played some "attractive" cricket throughout the tournament.
"The performances put (up) by the team... we were really a fighting unit, a very attractive unit throughout the tournament, just that very disappointed that we could not progress in the tournament," he added.