Jaipur, April 7 After Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) crashed to their fourth defeat in five games of IPL 2024, head coach Andy Flower admitted that the fortunes of the side’s batting line-up can be turned around if the batters fire in their remaining matches.
In Saturday’s match at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium, while smashing an unbeaten 113 off 72 balls, Kohli hit almost 62% runs of RCB’s total of 183/3, while the rest of the batters, including Faf du Plessis, Glenn Maxwell, Cameron Green and debutant Saurabh Chauhan made 59 runs from 48 balls.
"Of course we do discuss strike rate and aggression, it's part of the understanding of the T20 game that the level of aggression has to be above a certain threshold and you always want to be putting the opposition under pressure. Certainly taking the aggressive option, certainly on pitches like today.
"The fact is at the moment our top five aren't in sparkling form apart from Virat and that's a tough place to be. It's not for lack of effort. They're working hard. Giving it everything they've got bit just not firing at the moment, if we're going to turn this around, we need them firing," said Flower in the post-match press conference.
What has been even more bizarre from RCB has been the usage of their other Indian batting talent. Rajat Patidar has been floated around, while Anuj Rawat and Mahipal Lomror have been shunted in and out of the eleven.
Lomror has played all his domestic cricket for Rajasthan and had two impactful knocks, including in RCB’s win over Punjab Kings, where he made an unbeaten 17 off eight balls. But strangely enough, Lomror’s expertise wasn’t utilised in Saturday’s game. Dinesh Karthik had not being used much as a finisher and was held back in Saturday’s match, a move which surprised many.
"We've got issues with our batting. You're being generous when you say these are early days (in the competition). We're one from five games, not a position any side wants to be in. We've got Virat in superb form but the other guys are struggling a little for form and confidence.
"We're trying to do everything we can to make them feel strong and confident. As you've seen in this competition, scores and aggression are going only one way, we need that confidence and aggression to put the opposition under pressure and we haven't found that form yet," added Flower.
He also lamented the fact that RCB got only 54 runs in the last five overs, despite a century opening stand between Kohli and du Plessis. Moreover, in the last over of power-play, Mayank Dagar conceded 18 runs as Jos Buttler and Sanju Samson got an opening to establish a match-changing 148-run stand.
"We were a bit light (on runs at the end) I thought, given the base we had, we were about 107/0 in the 12th over, so we should have got upwards of 200 being in that position on a good pitch. But we started well with the ball, (Reece) Topley and Yash (Dayal), then (Mohammed) Siraj were brilliant upfront but the last over of the powerplay cost us some serious momentum," concluded Flower.
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