In their IPL 2024 encounter, Kolkata Knight Riders thoroughly trounced Royal Challengers Bangalore, under the direction of Faf Du Plessis. It was a poor performance for the team.
The Faf Du Plessis-led Royal Challengers Bangalore team had a dismal performance on Friday as they were soundly thrashed by the Kolkata Knight Riders in first IPL 2024 encounter. Even though Virat Kohli crushed his second straight half-century in the competition and appeared to be in excellent condition, it was insufficient. Sunil Narine and Venkatesh Iyer, who won the match for their side, took the fast bowlers to task, hence the bowling effort was below par. After RCB’s second IPL 2024 loss, former England captain Michael Vaughan delivered a terrifying assessment of the team.
When the RCB bowlers failed to contain a pair of free-hitting batters while defending 183, it provided the most recent and extensive example of this specific shortcoming. The match against the Kolkata Knight Riders on Friday.
To start the second innings with a better M Chinnaswamy pitch and the presence of dew is the initial defense plan. A deeper examination, however, will paint a different image.
It takes a tight start to defend a total, especially a competitive one like 183, but the RCB bowlers were wasteful.
Phil Salt hammered Mohammed Siraj’s length ball over mid-wicket for a six. The Englishman was then presented with two more delectable offerings on the fifth stump, which were carted for four and six each. Eighteen runs were scored in the opening over.
In the third over, Alzarri Joseph was brought into the game. However, the bowler sent Sunil Narine a length ball on the leg-stump that was hit for a six over long-on, and two balls later, he delivered a short-pitched ball in the same area for a maximum.
Whether there is dew or not, easy pitch or challenging pitch, these are the balls that will be penalized at this level.
The more seasoned players were hesitant to bring in those variations, at least not consistently. Vysakh Vijayakumar was an exception, though, as he returned with outstanding figures of 1/23 using knuckle balls and pace-off deliveries.
Because of the dew, the ball struck the bat a little faster in the second inning, making it marginally better to bat. “I tried to contain batters with hard-length balls and short balls banged into the pitch,” Vijaykumar stated at the news conference following the game.
However, it remained engrossing from both sides. Though the K.C. Rangers batters got away with it, we did try to change things up.” His statements have some validity. The figures demonstrate that the KKR bowlers took three wickets with 22 balls at a pace of less than 120 kmph and only let up 20 runs off them.
While this was going on, the RCB bowlers only managed to take one wicket in 19 balls at a pace of less than 120 kmph, giving up 40 runs.
