Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) captain Virat Kohli on Wednesday felt that his team was in with a chance of beating Mumbai Indians (MI) until the 17th over of the latter’s innings during an Indian Premier League (IPL) match.
RCB missed a chance to take a two-point lead at the top of the table after losing to MI by five wickets.
“We were in the game until the 17th over and that was a decent effort by our bowlers. It’s basically up to the gut of the captain and the conditions, we thought Dale and Morris for the initial swing and Washy in the powerplay. We needed a few wickets there, but their batsmen did a good job,” said Kohli after the match.
RCB were restricted to 164/6 after they collapsed from 131/3 to 139/6 between the 16th and 18th overs. Suryakumar Yadav then scored an unbeaten 79 off 43 balls to lead MI to victory with five balls to spare.
“It was a strange phase of batting,” said Kohli of the last five overs of RCB’s innings. “Everything went to the fielders and these kinds of things happen. They bowled in good areas in the last five overs and stopped us 20 runs short.”
The defeat leaves RCB on 14 points and they remain second due to their net run rate being higher than third-placed Delhi Capitals. They are also only two points ahead of fourth-placed Kings XI Punjab and fifth-placed Kolkata Knight Riders.
“This is always going to happen — some teams peak early and some do better later. As we can see, the teams in the lower half are turning out some really good performances now. When it’s a top-two clash, it will always be intense and in a competition like the IPL, you can’t expect any team to back down and be blown away,” said Kohli.
