OPINION
Follow UsIt is true that, unlike RCB sides of the past, this Faf du Plessis-led unit isn’t solely reliant on individual brilliance to score points.
It is true that RCB, this time around, have a starting XI that is more flexible and balanced than any of the RCB sides of yesteryear.
At the Dr DY Patil Sports Academy in Mumbai on Tuesday, we also learnt one more truth: that Harshal Patel is the most important cog in the wheel that is the Royal Challengers. That he is who makes the entire bowling tick.
Post the game, as RCB slumped to a 23-run defeat at the hands of their arch rivals, skipper du Plessis attested to the same.
“You see the value he (Harshal) offers not just to this team but any team. He has got the ability to really stop the game. We missed that tonight. Even towards the end we lacked the variety. Big miss for us, hopefully we will have him back soon again,” du Plessis said, highlighting Harshal’s importance to RCB.
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Purple cap winner in IPL 2021, Harshal, across the first four games of the season, didn’t take wickets at the killer rate he did last time around, scalping ‘just’ 6 from 4 matches at a rate of 1.5 per game. The ‘just’ has been highlighted because in IPL 2021, the right-armer took a staggering 2.13 wickets per game on average.
However, he brought a guaranteed, palpable sense of control that either coerced the opposition batters into committing unforced errors, or unsettled them. The beneficiaries of this were those around him — the Hasarangas and the Akash Deeps — who made fullest use of the pressure exerted by Harshal, leaving their own mark in matches.
But against CSK on Tuesday, the RCB attack had no reliable leader to rally around. And it showed as they ended up conceding the highest team total of IPL 2022.
Ahead of the contest, all the talk was around how RCB would fare in the death overs without Harshal. However, as much as the Royal Challengers missed Harshal’s presence at the back end of the bowling innings, it was arguably in the 7-15 phase that they felt his absence the most.
In RCB’s first four games of the season, Harshal — exclusively used outside the powerplay by du Plessis — had picked all his six wickets in the 7-15 phase, maintaining a ludicrous economy rate of 3.2. He simply did not give the batters an inch.
It was telling that, on Tuesday, it was this very phase where RCB ended up losing the plot. The Reds enjoyed a smashing powerplay, restricting CSK to just 35/1. And in the very next over post the powerplay they got a lucky break as a sensational bit of fielding from debutant Suyash Prabhudessai provided them the prized wicket of Moeen Ali.
However, the smiles soon got wiped off as the final 8 overs of the middle-over phase ended up costing an eye-watering 96 runs.
Du Plessis bowling three overs of Siraj in the powerplay, and having to hold back Hazlewood for the death, meant that it was the spinners — Hasaranga, Shahbaz and Maxwell — and Akash Deep he went to, but no individual was able to provide an iota of control as the Super Kings batters feasted on an attack that looked blunt.
Not like RCB didn’t miss Harshal’s services at the death, either.
CSK managed 83 runs in the final 5 overs as Mohammed Siraj and Akash Deep continued to be liabilities at the back end. Between them, the two right-arm seamers conceded 42 in 2 overs in the final phase, not just bowling bad lengths but failing to maintain discipline.
But the horror-show from Siraj and Akash Deep didn’t come as a surprise as both had been just as bad in the matches leading into the Chennai clash. The duo, between them, have now sent in 9.5 overs at the death this season and have conceded 165 runs while taking a solitary wicket.
To talk about when Harshal will return would be insensitive, for such is the nature of the personal tragedy he’s just been through. But at least now, we know this: RCB are simply not the same bowling unit in his absence.
