Virat Kohli was a frustrated man at the post match presentation as RCB once again succumbed to a rather tame win against arch rivals CSK.
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RCB had a woeful batting effort in the 1st innings as none of the their star batsmen applied themselves on a rather sticky wicket in Pune.
Virat Kohli was bambozzled by a Jadeja ‘special’, whereas AB de Villiers couldn’t keep himself in the crease while trying a reverse sweep against the wiley Harbhajan Singh.
Parthiv Patel proved to be the lone warrior for RCB with Southee playing a handy innings down the order to help the Bangalore franchise get a respectable total on the board.
CSK were always favourites going into the second innings as the total wasn’t that that steep.
However, after a good initial few overs, CSK somehow lost the way during the middle, but there was MS Dhoni, waiting for all the commotion to end, and take CSK over the line after he had created some sort of excitement for the RCB unit.
Virat Kohli was disappointed with how the batsmen played in the first innings, admitting that all 6 batsmen had soft dismissals, something that is not acceptable at this level.
While, Dhoni’s innings did mean defeat for RCB, Kohli felt that in the larger scheme of things, this revival of Dhoni is great for Indian cricket.
“I think it was a close match, we did really well to pull it back but two drop catches doesn’t help. It wasn’t an ideal day for us, six out of six soft dismissals is really rare to see but that is how this game goes. We gave a good effort in the second half, we knew it is going to be difficult with the total we had. This wicket surprised me, we knew it was going to be slow but it played slow under lights too. It was difficult to score in the end, had we taken the chances we could have made the match closer.” he said.
“Everyone loves to see MS striking the ball, the way he is doing. The bigger picture is that it is good for Indian cricket. They have played well and they deserve to win this game. We know it is a tough road ahead, we need to win at least 4 matches or all 5 matches. We have to pull our socks up. We have played our best cricket when we have been in this position. I have an optimistic feeling about the games ahead.”
