“Virat Kohli Wasn’t Able To Time The Ball”: England Great On Where ‘Unbalanced’ RCB Faltered vs KKR

The IPL 2024’s start for Royal Challengers Bengaluru has been placid to say the least. The side have lost two out of three games and the first team this edition to not lose a match at home. The RCB side were bolstered by an unbeaten 83 from Kohli as they scored 182/6. But KKR reached the target with more than three overs to spare. Speaking on Star Sports, former England cricketer Stuart Broad spoke on the inadequacies of the RCB bowling line up. “In times like that you want to heap praise on KKR, you know six visits in a row they’ve taken a victory in Bengaluru. You have to look at the RCB bowling too, just watch KKR bowl cutters and slower balls and into the pitch, very difficult to one of the best batters ever, Virat Kohli, who wasn’t able to time the ball consistently throughout,” he said.

“And then they come on and bowl with a lot of pace on, which disappeared to the boundary, they bowled short and were predictable, but that’s their issue RCB, I think their batting for many years has been strong and they’ve got star power there but then their bowling unit doesn’t seem to be able to stand up and win them games. It looks like a slightly unbalanced team and in my personal opinion they’ve got their overseas players spot on and sometimes it takes a humbling loss like that at home to sharpen your focus and make you realise how you should be playing.”

Broad spoke on the bad tactics deployed by the RCB bowlers. “It was in the length that he hit and RCB should have followed that, they dropped much shorter or were in the slot with their slow balls. I think what Andre Russell did so well, it wasn’t necessarily back of the hand stuff, it was just cutters, going into the top of the stumps which the batters weren’t able to adjust to. And when you’re bowling cutters, if you drop too short or too full, the batters can adjust, but if you’re in the length that they can’t quite get to, that’s when it’s difficult and RCB just didn’t get their lengths right. Too short, too full with the slower balls and cutters and KKR punished them.”

Broad added: “With the team batting first, normally you’d expect to learn so much from the team that has bowled first and take all that information and deliver that in the second innings. So they had all the information of what KKR did so brilliantly, but they didn’t manage to put that into practise and deliver that skill. I think RCBs coaching staff and captain will be really disappointed with the execution of they could have done.”