“I felt like a lot of our bowlers were just a little bit off their rhythm and their line in particular,” Hayden said at the press conference after the game. “KG Rabada’s figures, I think, were a bit more expensive than perhaps what he bowled today. I thought he was actually pretty good and same too with Rashid.

“Siraj had an off day, simple as that. When we reviewed his pitch map, he was a little bit too short, a little bit too wide, and that’s just a great bowler just having an off day. Whereas I thought Rashid actually could have had a much better day. It could have been a couple more wickets in the wicket column and so too with KG Rabada as well.

“If anything, KG bowled a little bit of a leg-stumpy line, back of a length. And short-of-a-length, good-length balls tended to be a fraction wide of off stump. But we’re splitting hairs in many ways. Batters have the intent now to score quickly.”

But the star bowlers would be expected to do the basics right, wouldn’t they? “It just shows you the margins in these games – this is a loss by six runs – are so small,” Hayden said. “But the point is definitely noted in terms of the discipline and wides and just those abilities of our bowlers to keep consistently bowling their best ball.”

And it could be down to their six-hitting, or the lack of it. GT comfortably beat PBKS on the fours count – 15 to six – but lost on sixes – three to 14. On Saturday, they hit 24 fours to RR’s 18, but only seven sixes to RR’s 12.

“When we saw both sides hit plenty of boundaries and the dot balls is also another thing that I looked at in our batting in the last game,” Hayden said. “Actually, when we looked at the Punjab Kings game versus us, they were much better boundary-hitters than us. We were better at actually strike rotation.”

“Washy Sundar, he had a pretty big decision to make at that point around if you’re going to attack someone like Bishnoi, who was on a roll. That was maybe a choice that he can look at and will look at as well in terms of just trying to be a little bit more cohesive in our run chases, because it has to be said there wasn’t a lot that went wrong in that first 12 overs. There was plenty of great stuff,” Hayden said, referring to Washington attempting to hit Bishnoi over the longer leg-side boundary and holing out.

“The run out [of Shahrukh Khan] was something that, again, was a decision which Shahrukh and Rashid had to make at the time. I haven’t broken down that play because as a coach you tend to kind of look at the ball, but I’ll be interested also to see the approach when we get back to vision of how that run was executed. It certainly looked at from the sideline that Jaddu [Ravindra Jadeja, at the extra-cover boundary] bumped the ball quite a long way away from him and to regather, as we know, he’s so quick and he’s so good at getting and releasing the ball.

“But there’s two wickets straightaway that would have been the difference. Again, we’re talking about six runs. So those little things in T20 cricket, when you’re chasing down a big total, which we were, they become vital in the decision-making process of a batting unit.”

GT next play Delhi Capitals, who have won both their games so far, on Wednesday in Delhi.