Chennai Super Kings opener Faf du Plessis has said the last-ball win against Royal Challengers Bangalore, chasing a target of 206 at Chepauk, was a "turning point" in their campaign. Super Kings, the defending champions, had a poor start to their season, losing two out of their first three games before the dramatic five-wicket win on Thursday.

With Super Kings needing 43 off 12 balls, Albie Morkel launched three sixes, two fours and ran a two in the penultimate over from Virat Kohli, reducing the equation to 15 off the final over. Though Morkel was dismissed, Dwayne Bravo continued hitting boundaries off Vinay Kumar, and Ravindra Jadeja edged the last ball for four to win the game.

That the home side got even that far was down to du Plessis, who dominated an opening partnership of 56 and went on to make 71. After his dismissal, with the score on 128, MS Dhoni kept Super Kings in the game with 41 off 24 balls.

"Games like this you are not supposed to win, we were down and out, we should not have won. That, as a team lifts, you up massively, it gives you confidence. Hopefully that will be the turnaround in our season," du Plessis said. "We actually said this is going to be the turning point, so it gives us massive confidence in the games to come. Bangalore is a good team, so to beat them like that was fantastic."

Du Plessis said Super Kings' early defeats in the season were because of poor starts, which did not happen against Royal Challengers. "We needed a good start. In the three other games we lost a wicket in the first over, so it was just to get a start. We analysed the wicket and said it was a good wicket, there wasn't much spin, which was the key for us as they've [Royal Challengers] got fantastic spinners. If it started to spin in the second innings, then it really would have been tough."

Muttiah Muralitharan, who took 3 for 21 in his four overs, said Royal Challengers had made costly errors. "They played well and we made some mistakes, which is why they won off the last ball," he said. "We had about 40 runs [in last two overs]. We thought even if they get 20 runs off Virat, they will have 20 runs to get. Unfortunately that over went for 29 runs, so they had about 15 runs to get [off the last over]."