We take pleasure in the way we play, but tonight we fell short, and we are not ashamed to confess it.
RCB After losing by 21 runs at home in Bengaluru on Wednesday night, Virat Kohli, who was filling in as captain for Faf du Plessis, claimed that Royal Challengers Bangalore had given Kolkata Knight Riders “a freebie” and “deserved to lose” because of all of their mistakes in the field.
After the game, Kohli admitted to the host broadcaster, “To be honest, we handed over the game to them.” “We didn’t play with enough professionalism on the field, so we deserved to lose. The bowlers made good shots, but we couldn’t hang onto our opportunities. In T20 cricket, that’s referred to as a “freebie,” and we effectively gave them the victory. This is not ideal in my opinion because we take pride in the way we play, and tonight, we didn’t play up to par.
“There were a few times when we failed to capitalize in crucial situations. We missed opportunities in the field for four to five overs, which ultimately cost us roughly 25 to 30 runs.
Nitish Rana, the captain of KKR, was given two life in the 13th and 15th overs, and he later scored 48 runs off just 21 balls. He had his first opportunity when, when on 5, Mohammed Siraj dropped Rana off Vijaykumar Vyshak at long-off. Rana flicked to fine leg off Siraj’s bowling one over later, but Harshal Patel was unable to hold on. Rana was then on 19 off 12.
Rana finished the following over, the 17th, with two fours and a six off Vyshak after hitting two sixes against Harshal in the previous over. In the end, RCB let away 50 runs off the final four overs, allowing KKR to reach 200.
Then, after scoring 58 runs in their pursuit, RCB lost three wickets—Faf du Plessis, Shahbaz Ahmed, and Glenn Maxwell—during the powerplay. After that, Kohli scored his fifth fifty this year and, together with Mahipal Lomror, kept RCB in the contest with a 55-run partnership. However, the pair fell quickly after one another, which stopped the pursuit.
“With the bat, we set ourselves up really well, and then [there were] so many soft dismissals,” added Kohli. “Balls that don’t get us wickets, but we ended up hitting them to the fielders four or five times during the innings. These are a few soft plays in cricket that your team should steer clear of. Therefore, it is evident that you will lose when you play six or seven of those in a row.
Even after losing wickets, one partnership allowed us to retake the lead in the match. We only needed one more alliance to be on the verge of pursuing that [goal]. Simply identifying what went wrong tonight will help us avoid giving the opposition easy opportunities.
The loss to KKR was RCB’s second of the year. Currently, they are only two points behind the Gujarat Titans and Chennai Super Kings in the standings, but they still have five away games to play until their final league game at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium.
