IPL 13: Kohli puts hand up, says couple of important chances went down

DUBAI: Having started the season with a win, Royal Challengers Bangalore didn’t have a good outing against Kings XI Punjab on Thursday as they lost by 97 runs at the Dubai Cricket Stadium. Skipper Virat Kohli made no bones about the fact that it was a bad day in the office not just for the team, but also for him individually.

While Kohli managed to score just 1 run with the bat, he missed two catches of KXIP skipper KL Rahul and that did make a difference as Rahul hit a brilliant century to lead his team from the front. In fact, Rahul was in the 80s when he was dropped and went on to hit an unbeaten 132 off 69 balls.

“Yeah it didn’t (go well). I think we were good in the middle phase with the ball, they got off to a decent start and we pulled things back nicely. I have to stand in front and take the brunt of it, not the best day in the office, couple of important chances of KL when he was set and that cost us 35-40 runs at a later stage,” he said in the post-match presentation ceremony.

Kohli also pointed on how the team could have done a better job with the ball and restricted KXIP to a sub-200 total as that would have put less pressure on the batsmen during the chase.

“Maybe if we restricted them to 180 we wouldn’t have been under pressure from ball one of the chase. We know exactly where we went wrong and I have to put my hand up and say a couple of important chances went down. There are days when these kinds of things happen on the cricket field, they happen and we have to accept them.

“We have had a good game, we have had a bad game and now it is time to move on. Learn from the mistakes we make. We did pretty well closing in on the second time out. Those are the moments, we pulled things back nicely so we understand how to do that as a team,” he pointed.

Kohli also did surprise many by coming in at No.4 rather than his usual No.3 position and the skipper said that it was about looking at options as also giving young Australian talent Josh Philippe a go at the top end of the innings.

“He (Philippe) has batted at the top of the order for Western Australia and done well in the BBL as well, early days in the tournament so we thought we will maximise his ability and see how we go from thereon. We thought we will give ourselves a bit of depth in the middle overs,” Kohli said. (ANI)