Royal Challengers Bengaluru suffered their second defeat of IPL 2024 on Friday night and they are currently struggling with the form of both their top-order batters, and strike bowlers.
While their star troika of Mohammed Siraj, Yash Dayal and Alzarri Joseph has been leaking plenty of runs, barring Virat Kohli, RCB top-order is yet to fire in unison.
Faf du Plessis (46 runs from 3 innings), Glenn Maxwell (31 from 3 innings), Rajat Patidar (21 from 3 innings) and Cameron Green (54 from 3 innings) have failed to register a significant score thus far and it has fallen down to Virat Kohli and finisher Dinesh Karthik to share the burden of their batting performances.
Kohli has 181 runs from three innings including two half-centuries while Karthik has 86 runs at a strike-rate of 195.45.
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On Friday, RCB hosted KKR and suffered a seven-wicket defeat.
Kohli was the top-scorer for the home team, hitting an unbeaten 83 with the next best score coming from the bat of Green who made 33. Maxwell was dropped twice and he failed to capitalise to be dismissed on 28.
RCB eventually finished with 182/6 and it proved insufficient as KKR batters hunted it down in mere 16.5 overs.
Batting legend Sunil Gavaskar has pointed out that Kohli cannot keep on doing the bulk of scoring for RCB and had he been aptly supported against KKR, the former skipper would have peeled off a century.
“You tell me how much Kohli will do alone? Someone should accompany him. If someone had supported him today, he would definitely have scored 120 instead of 83. This is a team sport, not a single man game. He didn’t get any support today,” Gavaskar said on Star Sports.
However, RCB captain Du Plessis put the blame on the pitch which changed drastically during KKR chase aiding their cause.
“Strange one, first innings we thought that the wicket was very two-paced, you could see that when the guys bowled the cutters, back of a length, the guys really struggled. We thought it was a decent score knowing that it gets a little bit easier in the evening, there was a little bit of dew that came in,” he said during a post-match interaction with the broadcasters.
RCB have slipped to the sixth spot in the 10-team competition now.
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