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Ipl 2020 Rcb Vs Kxip What Experts Said As Both Virat Kohli Kl Rahul Fail To Turn Up Tactically

IPL 2020 | RCB vs KXIP: What experts said as both Virat Kohli, KL Rahul fail to turn up tactically

The Kings XI Punjab finally won their second match in the Indian Premier League 2020 after a prolonged period of frustrating losses. However, the team almost made a meal of their chasing efforts and won what looked like an easy chase only on the last ball of the game.

Here is a compilation of what captains and experts thought about the game between the sides led by Virat Kohli and KL Rahul.

Captains’ take

The winning captain KL Rahul accepted the lack of confidence in his side after a series of losses in closely-fought games. “I don't even have words. We knew that we had to scrap and get over the line once and that would give us confidence. We're a far better side than the bottom of the table. Towards the end, it got too close for comfort but happy that we made it,” KL Rahul said to the host broadcaster Star in the post-match interaction.

Discussing the mood in the camp after the team was failing to win games when all seemed done and suited KL Rahul expressed his and the team’s disappointment and frustrations to be failing to close the games but also saw a philosophical side of it calling it part of the game.

“It's very natural to feel disappointed and frustrated and it's not just me, as a group we've been frustrated. Our skills were very good, probably didn't capitalise in the big moments starting with the first game against Delhi. It's part of the IPL, it's part of cricket. There are ups and downs and this has been the kind of rollercoaster that's been crazy but on a positive note we needed this win,’ Rahul added.

Discussing the importance of his personal performances and the state of the team in terms of the hunger for the win in the camp Rahul said “At the moment, my first time as captain, you kind of don't reflect on your own performance. As a leader you need to think of everybody and how to manage the 15 or the 25 balanced and hungry to do well. That's been the challenge so personal performances haven't been on my mind so much.”

Among all on the field and across the world, Virat Kohli, too, was surprised at the game going to the wire and needed a first-ball six from Nicholas Poooran to finally end it. “It was quite surprising, we thought the game might finish in the 18th. A bit of pressure at the back end can confuse you, anything can happen in this game,” Kohli said to the host broadcaster Star in the post-match interaction.

He congratulated the Kings XI team for putting a complete performance and accepted that his team was outplayed by the KL Rahul-led side.

Explaining the reason behind the contentious move to hold back AB de Villiers, Kohli said the team management had discussed a plan to counter the leg spinners in the opposition ranks and hence he preferred left-handers in the middle overs of the innings. However, he accepted that the move did not pay off and it was a night that did not turn out well according to his and the team’s planning.

Experts’ take

The decision by the RCB team management led by Virat Kohli to promote Washington Sundar and Shivam Dube in order to ‘take Punjab’s leg spinner out of the game' left all commentators calling the game at that point in the game flummoxed.

Kevin Pietersen strongly criticised the move and suggested that he did not believe Washington Sundar could manage the legging any better than AB de Villiers could have done. Mark Nicholas went a step further and said that if left-handers are necessary to combat leg spinners and for that AB de Villiers has to be held back, that left-handers should only be none other than Brian Lara.

Harsha Bhogle took a lighter tone on the issue and said if Virat Kohli and management think AB de Villiers can’t manage to score off Murugan Ashwin and Ravi Bishnoi, it’s nothing short of breathtaking achievement for the leggies of Punjab and they should cherish the achievements with their upcoming generations.

He also criticised the way the Kings XI decides to chase and said that they make matches that look easier into obstacles.

Veteran cricket journalist Sambit Bal pointed out the overstressing of the matchups in the T20 cricket with reference to Kohli holding back Washinton Sundar’s over specifically for Gayle only to get Gayle going all guns blazing against the young off-spinner.

He also came hard at the Kings XI Punjab’s chasing patterns and wondered what led to them getting to such precarious situations from a relatively walk in the park kind of positions.

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IPL 2020 | RCB vs KXIP: Hits and Flops as Kings XI finally break their losing streak

The Kings XI Punjab finally broke the shackles after a string of losses in the ongoing season but not before squandering all the good start and momentum and taking it to the last ball of the game. Chris Gayle took time at the start of the innings in his first match of the Indian Premier League 2020 but found his rhythm and guided the team almost to the finishing line while KL Rahul batted in his usual way of anchoring the chase. While the game was highlighted by the Universe Boss's return to the tournament, there were several strategic brain-fade moments that were difficult to endure. On that note, here is our list of the best and worst performances of the last game. Hits Chris Gayle The Kings XI management ignored Chris Gayle’s prowess in the initial stages of the 13th Indian Premier League. There was quite a buzz before his IPL 2020 debut and he made his bat talk to justify all of the buzz and traction he was getting. He was helped by the opening pair of KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal who had set up the chase brilliantly with the required rate in control. Gayle took time to settle down and at one time was batting at just three runs from 11 balls but by the time the RCB would have realised, he had taken off to a 36-ball-50. KXIP have found major issues with their batsmen not seeing through the innings in run chases, and with Gayle on board against RCB, that pivotal issue seemed to have disappeared. Chirs Gayle is a veteran of T20 cricket and the KXIP need him to fire but with a different role at the number three. The team can’t afford to separate a successful partnership of KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal and hence it is imperative for Gayle to remodel his game for the number three position. He did justice to the role assigned to him and both Anil Kumble and KL Rahul would hope that the streak will continue. Mayank Agarwal Mayank Agarwal started the tournament with a mission to make this season his own and he has been at it so far. The right-hander missed out on a well-deserving fifty trying to hit Yuzvendra Chahal for consecutive sixes in the 8th over but it was his innings that set up the scoring rate while KL Rahul anchored the innings. Mayank did not get too many balls to face in the first three overs but when Kohli tossed the ball to Yuzvendra Chahal in search of an early breakthrough looking at the prolific record of these two batsmen in the partnership, Agarwal’s eyes lit up and he plummeted Chahal for six and two boundaries to get going. A couple of sixes off Chahal and Udana followed in the next few overs and by the time he was bowled by Chahal in an attempt to slog sweep the leg spinner across the line, he had made sure the Kings XI were batting well enough to keep the required run rate well under control (less than 8 runs per over). Murugan Ashwin Murugan Ashwin started brilliantly just after the end of the mandatory power play and was quick to find the suitable length for the Sharjah which is now showing a tendency of assisting spinners. He drew an outside edge off Aaron Finch's bat on his second ball but the edge flew between KL Rahul and Chris Gaylestanding at wide slip. An unbothered Ashwin produced another peach of delivery on the following ball that caught Finch rooted to the crease and searching for the ball that pitched on the leg stump and spun just enough to beat his outside edge and castle him. He was tough to get away for the RCB batsmen, in particular Washington Sundar who was brought in before AB de Villiers especially to thwart the leg-spinning challenge. A googly that pitched on the off-stump of the left-handed Sundar enticed him to go for the slog sweep and the top edge was safely pouched by Chris Jordan at the long-on boundary. Ashwin finished with a superb figure of 23/2 off his four overs which is nothing short of exemplary in Sharjah. Flops KL Rahul It’s very unusual to place a batman who steadied the ship and finished not out at 49-ball-61 in the list of flops of the game but the kind of leadership KL Rahul showed on the field was tame. The team was in need of mere 7-8 runs per over when Gayle completed his fifty and considering he batted through the innings he should have ensured that the team does not walk the same path they did in the last match against the Kolkata Knight Riders. KL Rahul has been prolific with the bat in the tournament so far but not the same can be said about him in terms of ideas and vision about the team. He has looked to be carrying the baggage of discipline and class who can’t afford to get out whatever the situation the team finds itself in. When asked, a defiant Rahul termed the statistics about strike rate overrated and that he will take a 120 strike rate any day if that wins matches for his team. Well that has not quite worked out yet, has it? Yes, in matches where the wickets keep falling around him this could have come to his rescue but against the RCB, where there were 9 wickets in hand, what was the logic of dealing in singles throughout the innings? Commentators calling the game in the end overs, too, pointed out that the match should not have reached the stage it ultimately reached and that KL Rahul should have taken initiative when the Kings XI had proven batsmen sitting in the dugout. Virat Kohli Like KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, too, had a good with the bat but a terrible day as the captain of the side. Winning and losing a game is part and parcel of the game but to think that batsmen like Washington Sundar and Shivam Dube can handle leg spinners better than AB de Villiers and more so in the T20 format is nothing short of bizarre. When the second wicket fell in Aaron Finch in the seventh over, the world was waiting for AB de Villiers to walk out in the middle and the kind of touch he had shown in the last game against the KKR on the very pitch with a 33-ball-73, the expectations of him were not out of place. Virat Kohli and Mike Hesson had a different plan in the mind and ultimately what everyone feared turned out to be true and the experiments to send both Sundar and Dube ahead of de Villiers failed miserably and the RCB fell short of par scorer even after a blitzkrieg from Chris Morris in the last over. Sharjah, which at the start of the IPL 2020 was appearing as a deathbed for the spinners is turning out to be a heaven for slow bowlers in the last couple of games. Spinners have got purchase from the pitch in the back to back matches and the teams will now have to change their outlook about Sharjah where the par score has reduced considerably in the last two games. This Kings XI have kept their hopes alive and also avoided the danger of walking into the must-win territory However, KL Rahul needs to sit down with Anil Kumble and finalise the role of the player in order to make himself free from the burden of doing all the roles by himself.

IPL 2020: Mahela Jayawardene reveals the key reason behind Mumbai Indians' good show in UAE

Defending champions Mumbai Indians are currently at the second spot in the IPL points table. Head coach Mahela Jayawardene believes one of the key reasons for the consistent show is the ability to adapt to conditions quickly. Mumbai have won five games out of their seven outings so far. At the press conference ahead of their clash against Kolkata Knight Riders, Jayawardene stated that the players are in good touch and they are executing the plans well. “Trying to get them to understand the conditions quickly enough and adapt so, I think that is where we came back strongly after that first few games where we learned quickly how to play in Abu Dhabi which is going to be our main venue, having to play eight games there. That has been the key, players understanding how they need to adapt change and their role identification as well. So far, I’m very happy with the way the guys have responded to that,” Jayawardene told ANI News. On the bench strength in the Mumbai Indians squad, Jayawardene said that players who aren't getting opportunities are an important part of the team as they keep others on their toes. He concluded by saying that Mumbai have got some very strong bench strength and that it will help them as the tournament moves to the business end gradually.

IPL 2020 | MI vs KKR: Match Preview, Predicted XI & Dream11 Fantasy Picks

As the 13th edition of the Indian Premier League is nearing its completion of one month, teams are stacking up against each other for round two of the clashes between them. In fans' and experts’ eyes, the fact that every team plays each other twice in the tournament and that provides teams with an opportunity to bounce back if they don’t make a good start. The Kolkata Knight Riders led by Dinesh Karthik will walk on the field with exactly the same objective against a Mumbai Indians that has truly looked like a side fitting for the tag of ‘4-time champions’. Mumbai will be hoping for consistency from the players and will try to keep up the momentum they have picked after the loss in the opening game of this season. Karthik’s Knight Riders have failed to click as a team and while the team has produced some stellar individual scores, it has not been able to match the challenges posed by the teams in good form this season. The men in purple and gold had started the season against the very Mumbai Indians side when Rohit Sharma had put on his full-throttle attack against the Kolkata bowling line-up. The team has bounced back from the first game on the back of a few strong performances but have looked unconvincing in several crunch moments in the game. In the last game against the Royal Challengers Bangalore, the team never looked in the race while chasing a mountain of 195 runs. A team that has a legacy of being strong on pitches that are slower and spinning, Kolkata failed miserably in the process of containing Bangalore’s batsmen. AB de Villiers powered the RCB with a 33-ball-73 while the KKR could manage a mere 112 and for once were staring at becoming the first side to be bowled out in the IPL 2020. The KKR think tank led by captain Dinesh Karthik and Brendon McCullum has not been able to think clearly on the role of players in the side. Earlier, Sunil Narine opened the batting with no good effect and the team held back a proven opener in Rahul Tripathi, at times playing him at 7 or 8. The team made a course correction and opened with Tripathi, but was dropped from the opening slot yet again after the Englishman Tom Banton was included in the squad. The team decided to tinker with a player who had shown signs of good form in Tripathi and again slotted him down the order at number 7 and he was of no use at that position. The team was missing the services of Sunil Narine, the mystery bowler who once used to own the stage of the IPL and now the team will miss him as a player in the first place with him being put on notice for illegal action. Narine has not been at his best but has helped the side win two very close encounters by bowling economic overs in the back end and his absence hurt the side in the last game against the RCB. On the contrary, the Mumbai Indians have to worry about other teams bouncing back to good form and it takes only a handful of matches to change the outlook of the points table. The good thing for the team is that captain Rohit Sharma is well aware of the other teams’ attempt to catch up and he has asked his team to refrain from being complacent. The core of Mumbai Indians is very experienced with the likes of Rohit Sharma, Kieron Pollard, Hardik Pandya have seen many moments of triumph in the IPL and they know enough about keeping things tight for not to slip away the momentum gained in the early phase of the tournament. The team has looked indispensable with dominating batsmen at all the positions right from the top order to the lower-middle order. The batting has dominated almost every attack they have come up against and in the last match against the Delhi Capitals, the side showed it can raise their game even from the current standards when the situation demands and convincingly defeated the Shreyas Iyer’s Capitals. On the bowling front, the trio of Trent Boult, James Pattinson, and Jasprit Bumrah has run circles around the batsmen in the ongoing season and it’s almost like they are saying if Boult does not get you, Pattinson will or if Bumrah does not get you, Boult will. Spinners Rahul Chahar and Krunal Pandya have chipped in brilliantly in the middle overs picking up crucial wickets and Rohit Sharma’s Mumbai Indians look like a well-oiled machine running on a highway and beating every team that has come its way. Mumbai Indians vs Kolkata Knight Riders: Match details Match Number- 32 Date: 15th October 2020, at 7:30 PM IST Venue: Abu Dhabi Pitch and weather conditions A new pitch will be used for the game between the Mumbai Indians and the Kolkata Knight Riders and new-ball bowlers on either side will look to make the most of the opportunity to move the new ball. The new ball has swung in Abu Dhabi and if there will be any chance of swing in the air on the night of the match, there is no one better than Trent Boult to find it and that will give the Mumbai an edge over the Kolkata Knight Riders that has shown signs of fragility at the top of the order. Captain winning the toss may face the dilemma of chasing but so far teams have struggled to chase in the tournament and it might be a good toss to lose in Abu Dhabi on Friday night. The weather will be on the cooler side with temperature in the sub 30 degrees range and the open stadium allowing the breeze to pass across it will make the conditions even more pleasant for the players in the field. Team News Mumbai Indians Rohit Sharma and Mahela Jayawardene have shown the mettle of being a tough think tank and backing their players to the hilt and there is no plausible reason for the team to chase the playing XI from the one that fielded in the game against the Delhi Capitals. Expected XI Quinton de Kock (wk), Rohit Sharma (c), Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan, Hardik Pandya, Kieron Pollard, Krunal Pandya, James Pattinson, Rahul Chahar, Trent Boult, Jasprit Bumrah Kolkata Knight Riders The KKR management has a lot to ponder upon the playing XI and they have their tasks cut out to field an eleven that can provide a balance to the side. The position the team finds itself in now, it can only go up and the team must find a way to back Kuldeep Yadav who has not been given enough chances this season. However, that seems unlikely looking at the way the KKR has managed the resources at their disposal. Rahul Tripathi must be brought back to open the innings and if Tom Banton has to play at the top of the order, Shubman Gill will be shifted to the number 3 position, but that seems unlikely given McCullum's confidence in the young Indian. Nitish Rana has not looked in his best touch and if the KKR decides to go aggressively like how it has been for McCullum in his playing days, Kuldeep Yadav may get a look in in the place of Nitish Rana with Gill slotting down to number three. Expected XI Tom Banton, Shubman Gill, Nitish Rana/Kuldeep Yadav, Eoin Morgan, Dinesh Karthik (c & wk), Andre Russell, Rahul Tripathi, Pat Cummins, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Prasidh Krishna, Varun Chakravarthy Mumbai Indians vs Kolkata Knight Riders: Dream11 team and suggestion Rohit Sharma, Quinton de Kock, Ishan Kishan, Suryakumar Yadav, Eoin Morgan, Rahul Tripathi, Kieron Pollard, Andre Russell, Trent Boult, Jasprit Bumrah, Kamlesh Nagarkoti Captain: Rohit Sharma Vice-captain: Eoin Morgan

Tributes pour in as legendary journalist Kishore Bhimani passes away at 80

Veteran sports journalist and one of the mainstays in Doordarshan era cricket, Kishore Bhimani passed away on Thursday morning, 15 October at Kolkata. The Woodlands Multispeciality Hospital where he was admitted since September due to multiple health complications provided a press release today informing his sad demise. The release read that Bhimani had died at 6:25 am following a sudden cardiac arrest. He was 80 years old. Tributes poured in from the cricketing community for the legendary journalist of the typewriter era who shared fond memories of his measured voice and impeccable reading of the game. Many fondly remembered the famous incident of him calling the 1986 tied Test match between India and Australia in Chennai. Someone also noted Bhimani's comment on Dean Jones during the 1986 Test and reminded how harsh 2020 has been. Senior journalist and editor Gaurav Kalra in his tribute provided a glimpse of the gem Bhimani was and reminisced the memories that they shared. Kishore Bhimani is survived by his son, cricket commentator Gautam Bhiman who lives in Mumbai and is expected to be at Kolkata tomorrow.