IPL 2021 | RCB vs PBKS: Hits and Flops as Royal Challengers crush incompetent Kings to enter playoff

The failure to win an Indian Premier League trophy has always been a stinging reckoning for Virat Kohli’s long captaincy career and ironically his side has played their best cricket in the season that will be his last as the leader. 

Yes, they went all the way to the final in his captaincy in the year 2016 but they had more hits and misses in that season than the ongoing one where they are looking like a polished team that knows their weakness and strength upside down. 

The RCB unit looks to be a battle-hardened unit that is full of players who have taken it upon themselves to turn things around quickly in a game while the team also have not relied on personnel only to win games. Instead, there have been many match-winners in this season and their all-round consistency as the unit has helped them to become the third side to advance into the playoff of the IPL 2021.

On the other hand, there was no end to the struggle for Punjab Kings and after a lot of games where they have messed up their batting from seamlessly commanding position, it could be fairly argued that a lot of their misery now are of their own making.

Here, we’ll analyse the best and the worst performance of the day when the RCB quashed Punjab Kings’s aspirations to step onto the next stage of the tournament.

Hits

Glenn Maxwell

When Glenn Maxwell was going all guns blazing at the crease to play the innings that eventually separated the Kings from the RCB, the Kings had an interesting meme to share on Twitter to showcase their frustrations. 

Remember, he was all at sea in the last season before the Kings decided to end their union with the right-hander, and hence the big innings against their estranged family would not have felt nice.

Maxwell came out to bat when Moises Henriques removed Virat Kohli and Daniel Christian in a dream spell and his stay at the crease was imperative for RCB’s success in the game. 

However, Maxwell, the maverick that he is, also had his eyes on another big goal of setting up a big total on the board. The opening pair of Kohli and Devdutt Padikkal was firm but without fluency and the RCB needed some impetus in the middle phase of the game to push for a big score and Maxwell took the onus upon himself to be the man for his side.

His options were limited for the next two overs before Harpreet Brar provided him with the opportunity to open up his shoulders and he was more than ready to cash in. Two big hits over the midwicket region and both the RCB and Maxwell were on their way to a dazzling phase of play.

After taking on Harpreet, Maxwell was all set to unleash his might on Ravi Bishnoi, who has been one of the few trump cards that the Kings have had this season, and deposited him for two humungous sixes to announce that it was his day on the field. Maybe he was aware of Bishnoi’s tendency of bowling too many googlies from the outset and thumped him over his head and midwicket with unbelievable ease.

His juggernaut could have been limited only by Henriques, who was going through an equally remarkable day with the ball as Maxwell was having with the bat.

He had some more runs on offer against Bishnoi before getting caught by Mohammad Shami. What appeared to be a sluggish innings from the RCB till the 10th over, was transformed into a match-winning score by the time Maxwell left the ground after having scored a 33-ball 57 with the help of four brutal sixes.

Yuzvendra Chahal

Every time Yuzvendra Chahal comes to bowl in the second phase of the IPL 2021, commentators don’t forget to discuss his exclusion from India’s World T20 squad and appears that the leg spinner is also bowling like a man on a mission.

He was excluded from the side based on “recent form” that dated back to some couple of years as he struggled to pick up wickets in the middle overs to give his captain control of the game. However, he has turned both his bowling and fortunes around quickly in the UAE leg of the tournament.

His last five performances including the one against the Punjab Kings in the game read 29/3, 18/2, 11/3, 26/1 and 23/1 and if anything, it shows he is back to his best as a wicket-taking spinner for his side.

On the day against the Kings, his three wickets included the big wicket of a well-set Mayank Agarwal, who wanted to set up a win for the Kings, Nicholas Pooran and Sarfaraz Khan that broke the backbone of Kings’ batting after yet another impressive start.

He first dismissed Pooran with a dipping leg spinner that the left-hander could not place in the gap while playing in the air and then dismissed Mayank with another prefect leg break that took a lot more time to reach the right-hander than he anticipated and he could manage just a top edge.

Although he struck two big nails in Kings’ hopes, his best wicket came in the form of Sarfaraz, who was beaten all ends up on a more than perfect leg spinner that turned past the outside edge of his bat after pitching on the line of the off-stump. The right-hander was in disbelief, but it would have been more on his bad luck that he got that peach of a delivery on the very first ball of his comeback than on the credentials of Chahal, who has stormed back in the wicket-taking form that had made him a compelling spinner of choice for the Indian team.

Mayank Agarwal

Before the last edition of the IPL, Mayank Agarwal set a target of making the tournament count and as great players do after setting a target, he has embarked on a different trajectory with the bat in the tournament.

He has gone on to become a vital cog of an otherwise out of sync Kings’ vehicle since the last season. KL Rahul’s lack of aggression and plenty of runs divide opinions on social media, but if there has been one player who has been doing the job perfectly well without making any fuss, it’s Mayank Agarwal who has batted with supreme confidence and immaculate control.

On the day against the RCB, he was not at his best at the start but quickly found his mojo to get going and support Rahul, who for a change was looking to take the attack to the opposition very early in the piece.

The first ball 12 balls he faced produced just one boundary that came when he pulled George Garton over square leg in an emphatic fashion. He got on a roll from the fifth over when Kohli introduced left-arm spinner Shahbaz Ahmed to play a match-up game against two right-handers. His plan was thrown up in the air by Agarwal as he tonked him over the top on the very first ball. Another boundary followed in the over and the Kings were up and running in their chase.

He was also dismissive against Chahal in his first two overs and smashed him for two boundaries in an over but he was most ferocious against the left-arm spin of Shahbaz as he increased his six count off him to three to come closer to his well-earned fifty.

He could not finish the job for the Kings and was eventually flummoxed by Chahal in the most crucial phase of the game, but his innings with a perfect mix of composure and aggression kept the Kings in the game for a majority of the game.

Flops

Nicholas Pooran

Nicholas Pooran is deemed as one of the finest talents to come from West Indies in the current era but his performance in the competition which is built around the concept of providing a platform with the young talents from across the world is nothing short of inexplicable.

He had a torrid run for form with the bat in the last edition and a lot of the blame went to the Kings management for not allowing him a good slot to bat where he could dictate the flow of the game.

However, none of those calls is sticking in his favour any longer as his performances have not come up in line with the expectations and the game against the RCB was another such instance.

The openers have had a fantastic start and Pooran was assigned the big role of setting up the chase of 166 runs with half the innings remaining. He was not asked of throwing all he had in his capability to turn the game in a span of few balls and instead his stay at the crease along with timely boundaries would have helped the Kings. However, he looked more eager to showcase his repertoire of shots than to bat with calculative risks and perished in the process that appeared bereft of ideas.

He has struggled when the Kings have asked him to go for the big shots from the word go as the success rate can be assured in that method, but failure to bat when promoted up the order will not help his case as a reliable option considering the mega auction scheduled before the next edition of the league.

Daniel Christian

The RCB have played like a well-oiled unit in this edition of the IPL but if there is one component that has remained idle and is lucky at the first place to find himself in the team is Daniel Christian.

He too, like Pooran, was promoted up the order in order of giving him the opportunity to dictate terms to the bowling attack. He too has not had a lot of opportunity with the bat when the number of overs remaining has been high and hence the RCB asked him to bat at number three to push the scoring rate after a rather sluggish opening partnership between Kohli and Padikkal.

However, he was more rapid in coming back to the dugout than staying time in the middle and throwing the bowlers off their mark and got dismissed on the very first ball to bring the Kings back in the game. Christain would be happy on his countryman Glenn Maxwell, who masked his and top-order failure by playing a match-winning innings that deflated the Kings in the first half of the game itself.

The RCB have qualified for the playoff after suffering a minor scare at the start of the UAE leg and Kohli’s celebration after seeing the win against the Kings was explanatory of how much it meant for him after having announced the decision of leaving captaincy after this edition.

On the other hand, this was yet another infuriating loss for the Kings, who just can’t seem to find a perfect playing XI and those 11 players can’t just put their hands up in crunch situations to win them the game. They are not out of the tournament yet but they would be the first ones to admit to themselves that they don’t quite deserve to be in the top four sides of the tournament.