Nothing has gone according to plan for Royal Challengers Bangalore this season, the team combinations are forever under the scanner, the form of the marquee players is volatile and there is the string of losses which never allows the management to identify a core around which the entire team can be built.
However, as per captain Kohli, the side needs a win to find momentum and then they can gallop along. However, for Kohli, the form of AB de Villiers against Kolkata Knight Riders should be a worry.
AB de Villiers averages 24.92 against KKR in 18 matches - the lowest for him against any opponent, and when the situation has become so desperate, the skipper needs his X-factor to shunt away these numbers and step up.
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Having said this, there is a problematic trend which has emerged this season, AB has struggled to pick the googly which could make Dinesh Karthik toss to the ball to either Piyush Chawla or Sunil Narine when the South African takes strike. He’s been out to the off break or googly in the three games so far, and has a strike-rate of only 100 against spinners this season. Also, he averages only 5.60 against the googly and 9.75 against the off break, a trend Karthik should exploit.
“Obviously, we can’t shy away from saying that we are under the pump. That’s definitely the case, there is no doubt about it. We can’t sit here and say we are 0-4 and we are happy about it! But the only thing, to be honest, we are quite positive about the team we have. We have always spoken about in our dressing room the kind of team we have, we don’t deserve to have lost four games in a row,” wicket-keeper Parthiv Patel said before the match.
{{/usCountry}}“Obviously, we can’t shy away from saying that we are under the pump. That’s definitely the case, there is no doubt about it. We can’t sit here and say we are 0-4 and we are happy about it! But the only thing, to be honest, we are quite positive about the team we have. We have always spoken about in our dressing room the kind of team we have, we don’t deserve to have lost four games in a row,” wicket-keeper Parthiv Patel said before the match.
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