Two defeats in three games for Royal Challengers Bangalore is unfamiliar territory for Virat Kohli. His bat continues to talk, but his teammates are yet to produce a collective effort and smother the opposition in IPL 2016.
Shane Watson’s presence this season ensures depth in the batting and bowling departments. Stuart Binny, to a lesser extent, is capable of playing the same role.
The latter was one of the six changes in the previous game against Mumbai Indians. Individually, the players who came in pulled their weight to some extent — K.L. Rahul as opener, Travis Head as the slogger and Iqbal Abdulla as the left-arm spinner — though in the end, RCB failed to defend a decent score at the Wankhede.
Chris Gayle’s larger-than-life figure will be missing when Kohli leads his squad out at the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium on Friday against Rising Pune Supergiants, also yet to play to potential. RPS coach Stephen Fleming attributed the fluctuating form to first-season blues. “We don’t have that nucleus of players who have played together. We start a little bit back.”
RPS began with a victory over champion Mumbai Indians, followed by back-to-back losses.
He added: “It’s no excuse and it just means we have to be very specific with what we do and the teams that we put out. At the moment we’re just working very hard on the combination and making sure that the players are individually as good as they can be.”
Kohli and counterpart M.S. Dhoni will have realised by now that topsy-turvy results in IPL 2016 point to narrow gaps between teams.
Fleming agreed: “I think franchises have started to learn what they are looking for, what style of player they want, what conditions they play on at home.”
He added: “The whole competition has got a lot smarter around spending money and buying players, I guess (that’s) the reflection of the auction, you don’t see as many crazy buys, you see a lot of strategy now.”
The MCA Stadium at Gahunje is the home base for RPS and the contest against RCB will be the first home game for Dhoni and Fleming.
“We’ve got a pretty good idea, but it won’t be until one game under the belt that we’ll really see the characteristics of the pitch we play on.
“We hope we can get it right, with what we’ve seen and the work we’ve done.”
