Royal Challengers Bengaluru captain Faf du Plessis admitted their bowling is not their strongest suit after they suffered a seven-wicket loss against Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai on Thursday. RCB posted a fighting score of 196 runs on the board after they were put into bat by MI skipper Hardik Pandya.
But once again RCB’s bowling looked toothless as their bowlers were taken to the cleaners. MI openers – Ishan Kishan and Rohit Sharma – added 72 runs in the Powerplay overs with the former doing the bulk of the scoring.
Kishan went on to score 69 runs off just 34 balls whereas SKY, who was dismissed for naught in the last game, was able to hit the ground running. Yadav completed his fifty off just 17 balls, which is the fastest for him in the IPL.
Ishan Kishan scored seven fours and five sixes and made the most of the field restrictions. Moreover, SKY smashed five fours and four maximums in his blistering knock.
For RCB, all of their bowlers conceded their runs at an economy rate of more than 10 as they failed to keep MI batters in check. The hosts was able to chase down the target in 15.3 overs as the batters took an aggressive approach from the get-go.
Faf du Plessis feels they will need an extra cushion of runs with the bat as their bowling line-up is not the strongest.
Faf said after the loss, “We will have to find ways with the bat, get those big scores, we know our bowling is not our strongest suit, but we’ll have to find ways to manage it, we’ll have to be creative, go hard with the bat and make most of the first 4-5 overs with the bat.”
He added, “It’s a tough pill to swallow – combination of two things, very wet (the conditions with dew), I need to somehow win some tosses, secondly, they played really well, put the pressure on us and we made a lot of mistakes (especially during the powerplay). We knew dew would be a factor, we might have needed to make 250+, but they made 196 look very less.”
Royal Challengers Bengaluru will next take on Sunrisers Hyderabad at the M.Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru on Monday.
