BENGALURU: After eight matches in the Indian Premier League, Royal Challengers Bangalore are struggling to fire as a cohesive unit. The troubles - overdependence on the three top stars to put the runs on board, middle-order blues and the inability to check the flow of runs in their death overs are beginning to haunt them.
On Wednesday night against Kolkata Knight Riders, too many things went wrong for the Bengaluru-based franchise. Losing their penultimate home game by 21 runs, RCB will look to pull themselves up in their ensuing five away games. The think-tank headed by Mike Hesson and Sanjay Bangar will have to break down the issues plaguing the team.
The home team was outplayed by the Kolkata outfit. Sharp catches played a pivotal role in Nitish Rana and his men's victory, the same was the bane of RCB's challenge especially since they put down a catch from the red-hot Jason Roy while Rana was dropped twice.
Stand-in skipper Virat Kohli made no bones about the team's poor show.
At the post-match presentation, the RCB opener lamented, "To be honest, we handed them the game. We deserved to lose. We were certainly not up to standard. If you look at the game, we didn't capitalize our chances. We dropped a few chances which cost us 25-30 runs. That's what you call a freebie in T20 cricket and we literally handed them a victory."
RCB were also guilty of soft dismissals and lack of application from the batters. "We set up ourselves really well. Even while chasing, despite losing wickets we were one partnership away from being in the game. We needed one partnership to get us home," said Kohli.
After having played six home and two away games till now, RCB hit the road starting with their Monday's match against Lucknow Super Giants.
