NEWS
Follow UsUntil today, in every season Mike Hesson has been involved with the Royal Challengers Bangalore unit, they have made it to the playoffs. This year too they had a prime opportunity to qualify for the next stage of the competition at home. But the catch was that they were going up against one of the strongest units in the tournament, the Gujarat Titans.
Chinnaswamy Stadium has been long-standing a venue that favours the teams chasing, and the trend continued. Amidst the tough toil in the first innings, there stood an uber-calm, Virat Kohli. At every moment that the other RCB batters seemingly struggled, there was Kohli, who remained a cornerstone in this batting unit, joining a rare group of batters with consecutive centuries.
RCB skipper Faf du Plessis, following the elimination clearly put it down to the lack of runs from the middle-order. Alongside that, he also clearly expressed the ‘need’ for having a good middle-order, to ensure that they finish games off.
“From a batting perspective, the top 4 contributed really well. We missed a few runs from the middle order consistently throughout the season, especially in the back end of the innings, and also in the middle overs perhaps didn't get as many wickets as we would have liked,” Faf stated in the post-match presentation.
“We need to improve well on finishing games especially in the back end. Last year DK had a purple patch and was finishing games left, right and centre, but this season it wasn't to be. And if you see the teams that succeed they have some good hitters at five at six probably six and seven,” he added.
The Proteas batter also was in awe of his fellow opener, Kohli, who scored yet another century in this edition of the IPL, after his blazing knock against the Sunrisers the other night.
“Virat played an unbelievable knock to give us a chance and thought that was a good score, but Shubman played incredibly well to take the game away from us. He (Kohli) played really good cricket throughout the season and as a partnership probably not a single game where we had anything under 40 as an opening combination,” he added.
However, the right-hander was quick in praising Shubman Gill, whose century on the night was the differential factor between the two sides. Not only did Gill score a century, he found plenty of gaps throughout his stay at the crease, and ensured that Gujarat got over the line by five wickets, with a 61-ball 101.
“Very disappointed. We played a really strong team tonight, an amazing hundred from Shubman. It was really wet in the second innings. It was wet in the first innings as well, but there wasn't a lot of grip in the second innings and also we had to change the ball quite a few times during the second innings,” Faf reckoned.
