Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) suffered a crushing six-wicket defeat at the hands of Mumbai Indians (MI) in Match 54 of IPL 2023 at the Wankhede Stadium on Tuesday (May 9).
Asked to bat first, RCB racked up 199/6 on the board with key contributions from Glenn Maxwell (68 off 33), Faf du Plessis (65 off 41), and Dinesh Karthik (30 off 18).
In reply, MI chased down the target in just 16.3 overs as the likes of Suryakumar Yadav (83 off 35), Nehal Wadhera (52* off 34), and Ishan Kishan (42 off 21) took the RCB attack to the cleaners.
With this defeat, RCB dropped to seventh spot in the 10-team standings, carrying 10 points from 11 matches and coach Sanjay Bangar believes the young batters of the team haven’t stepped up in crucial situations.
“They are not progressing at a very good rate. Our younger batter Mahipal Lomror has been the one who has taken his chances well but Anuj Rawat and Shahbaz Ahmed whenever they have gotten those opportunities, unfortunately, they haven’t been able to capitalise on it,” Bangar said during the post-match press conference.
“But that’s the learning you have to be patient with the younger players and expect that they will take their opportunities and churn out match-winning performances for the team,” he added.
“We were built in such a way wherein Maxwell, Faf, Virat and Dinesh were going to be the fulcrum of the batting unit and the younger players would play around them,” he further stated.
Bangar said RCB were 10 runs short and they couldn’t get the impetus to score those extra runs.
“We certainly felt 10 runs short. We lost three wickets in the middle phase wherein Maxwell, Faf and Lomror got out. And towards the end we couldn’t get the impetus which was required to get those extra 10 runs,” he said.
Although RCB lost Virat Kohli (1) cheaply, Du Plessis (65 off 41) and Maxwell (68 off 33) added 120 runs for the third wicket to put the team in a commanding position.
Sharing his views on Faf and Maxwell attacking together, Bangar said, “Cricket is changing and we have already seen the effect of impact player on the way the teams are approaching.”
“Everybody is taking a lot of risks and they wanna go by ball one knowing there’s batting cover, if at all, even bowling cover. It adds a new dimension to the game and has made the game more attractive, fast paced and maybe in a couple of years you’d find not one substitute but two impact players and that’s always going to change the game,” he remarked.
(The Indian Express Inputs)
