Riding on Rahul Tripathi’s classic half-century, Rajasthan Royals outclassed Virat Kohli’s Royal Challengers Bangalore in the 53rd match of the Indian Premier League at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium, Jaipur, on Saturday and in the process eliminated RCB from the play-offs race.
Though, with the win, Rajasthan Royals have kept their play-offs hope alive, they will have to depend upon the other teams for qualifying to the knockout stage.
Talking about the match, Virat Kohli slammed RCB’s middle-order batting at the post-match presentation.
“We wanted to strengthen the middle-order which hasn’t happened, it hasn’t been our strength and we need to do that going into the next few seasons,” Virat Kohli after their 30-run defeat at the hands of Rajasthan.
Virat Kohli further said that the responsibility can’t be taken up by only AB de Villiers every time.
“We need to be smarter with composing our team. The responsibility cannot be taken up only by AB all the time. He certainly scored runs, but others need to contribute around him,” Virat added.
However, RCB, for a change, performed really well with the ball in the second half of the league. Star pacer Umesh Yadav was the top performer form Bangalore’s camp. Yadav had taken 20 wickets in IPL 2018.
“There were some new players who did well. Umesh bowled extremely well with the new ball, Chahal was great, Siraj and Moeen contributed too, so plenty of positives to take into the next season,” Virat Kohli noted.