Mike Hesson, the director of cricket at Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), on Monday, admitted that his team was a little bit off the mark in terms of executing their plans with the ball in their opening match of IPL 2022 against Punjab Kings.
In a run-fest at DY Patil Sports Stadium on Sunday, RCB was unable to defend 205 as Punjab chased down the total with an over to spare. Moreover, RCB conceded 22 extras with the ball with pacer Mohammed Siraj giving away 10 of them.
“We did not execute as well as we know we need to. I think that’s pretty obvious. We were just a little bit off in terms of being able to execute the plans we had in place. Obviously, we missed wide a lot – even though we were going for the wide line, we missed the wide line a few too many times, and we know we didn’t execute as well as we know we need to,” said Hesson in a video posted by the franchise on Twitter.
“So, certainly, plenty of things to work on, some really good things from a batting point of view. Akash Deep got his first IPL wicket – that was a big thing for him, and we’re obviously proud of him. But all in all, we were just a little bit off the mark in terms of our execution,” added Hesson.
Hesson refused to single out dew as a reason why Bangalore’s bowling attack couldn’t defend 205. “Look, it definitely changed after 10 overs. The dew started to come in a little bit, towards the back end there was quite a lot of that. Look, there’s no excuse.”
“At times we had the game very much in the balance. We fought hard to get back into it. Absolutely there was dew, and the ball slid on, but we still missed in terms of where we wanted to hit, so that’s something we will accept and we will obviously have to get right.”
With the bat, Bangalore had a sluggish start but Faf du Plessis made a stunning turnaround to make a stunning 57-ball 88 and was well-supported by Virat Kohli’s unbeaten 29-ball 41 and Dinesh Karthik’s undefeated late blitz of 14-ball 32.
“I thought we fought really well at the back. Obviously, it was tough; the first ten overs it was a little bit sticky. The fact that we got through that, lost only one wicket sort of gave us the chance to increase that momentum post the time out. We saw some exceptional batting from both Faf and Virat, and then DK at the end to get us a really good score. As I said, obviously it got easier to bat as things went on,” concluded Hesson.
