A 21-run defeat means RCB now have lost five in a row at M Chinnaswamy Stadium against the Kolkata Knight Riders. And after the defeat, RCB stand-in captain Virat Kohli was seemingly bemused.
Kohli, at the post-match discussion, directly blamed the team’s poor fielding and poor batting as a result of the defeat. There were instances in the match when RCB fielders dropped easy chances in the field.
Nitish Rana was dropped twice by Mohammed Siraj and Harshal Patel, and the KKR batter pounced with a terrific knock of 48 off just 21 balls. And Kohli pointed their poor fielding out after the match and said they gifted KKR the game.
“We handed them over the game. We did deserve to lose. We were not professional in the field. This is not ideal as we were not up to standard,” Kohli said.
“If you look at the game, we didn’t capitalize on crunch moments. We dropped chances which cost us 25-30 runs,” he added.
Chasing 201 runs, RCB were on course but they kept on losing wickets at regular intervals, which ultimately caused their downfall. And Kohli was disappointed with the way their batters gifted wickets in non-deserving deliveries.
“We set up ourselves really well. We ended up hitting the fielder to balls which weren’t wicket-taking. It is what’s on the scoreboard and how to get them,” he continued.
Kohli and Mahipal Lomror stitched a decent partnership of 55 runs, but the latter gave his wicket away on a short delivery to Varun Chakravarthy, which was the pivotal momentum-changing moment of the game.
“Even while chasing, despite losing wickets we were one partnership away from being in the game. We needed one partnership to get us home. We need to be switched on and not give away soft plays,” he further said.
As RCB played their penultimate match at Chinnaswamy on Wednesday, they will be now on the road for the next five matches. RCB’s immediate opponents are Lucknow Super Giants (May 1), and then they will travel to face DC (May 6), MI (May 9), RR (May 14) and SRH (May 18).
Their round-robin matches conclude with a home game against Gujarat Titans on May 21.
