Image Credit- BCCI
Following Mumbai Indians’ demolition of Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s 197 goal with 27 balls remaining, skipper Faf du Plessis conceded that his team was having difficulties since their bowling unit lacked “as many weapons” as the remaining teams. Du Plessis stated that as a result, in order for RCB to “have a chance,” their hitters must be skilled at scoring more runs, and their bowling unit must discover new strategies for efficiency.
“At the moment, it feels like, from a batting perspective we have to get and try and push for 220 to have a chance,” du Plessis said after RCB’s fifth defeat in six games. “From a bowling perspective, we don’t have as many weapons. So unfortunately it comes down to the batters to make sure that we use our form and our confidence. The scores that we put on the board are probably going to be the only way we are going to get into the competition.”
On Thursday, Mumbai scored at a rate of 12.84 runs per over, making all six of the RCB bowlers pricey. Akash Deep was the most costly bowler at 15.71, but even their most economical bowler, Vijaykumar Vyshak, bowled his three overs for 10.66. In the powerplay, RCB also gave up 72 runs for no wickets, leaving them unable to recover.
“From a bowling perspective, we have lacked a little bit of penetration [at the start] so we have to go out and find creative ways within our squad we can get a team two or three-down in the powerplay. Just so that you feel like your bowling innings can start on the front foot. It feels, for the last few games, that we are on the back foot after the first few overs.”
Du Plessis added that his bowlers were forced to make mistakes by the evening dew in addition to the strong start that Rohit Sharma and Ishan Kishan gave to the 53-ball stand of 101. He added that Mumbai used their batting resources more effectively than RCB and that the surface was batting-friendly.
“You also have to give credit in the way that the boys from MI came out and played,” he said. “Put a lot of pressure on our bowlers. Made our bowlers make a lot of mistakes in the powerplay especially.
“You could see that anyone who came in could find the middle of the bat quite easily. We did know that and spoke about it in the first innings. The dew here looked like it was going to be big so we felt we needed to get 215, maybe even 220. Obviously, 190 [196] or whatever we got wasn’t enough runs.”
“It [dew] is a big thing in some venues as we know. When the dew settles in, it is really tough. You could see the boys were bowling a few full tosses. We changed the ball a few times. It was really, really wet. But that’s just the game of cricket. It is probably the only sport where the conditions have such a big impact.”