Virat Kohli reveals why AB de Villiers batted below Washington Sundar and Shivam Dube vs KXIP

AB de Villiers: The wicket-keeper batsman from Royal Challengers Bangalore had come to bat in 17th over in Sharjah tonight.

Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Virat Kohli admits that he was left surprised with the recently concluded match against Kings XI Punjab going down to the wire.

“It was quite surprising, we thought the game might finish in the 18th [over]. A bit of pressure at the back end can confuse you, anything can happen in this game. Good performance by KXIP, we were not in the game tonight,” Kohli said during the post-match presentation ceremony.

With Kings XI needing seven runs in the last two overs with nine wickets in hand, no one expected the match to be decided on the last ball. Being asked about the chat with spinner Yuzvendra Chahal who almost defended two runs in the last over, Kohli laid emphasis on bowling wider to a new batsman in Nicholas Pooran.

“There was no conversation with [Yuzvendra] Chahal, to be honest. The only conversation was with the last ball, we wanted him to push it away. Credit to Nicholas [Pooran],” Kohli added.

Virat Kohli reveals why AB de Villiers batted below Washington Sundar and Shivam Dube

After winning the toss and electing to bat, Royal Challengers surprised one and all by not sending out wicket-keeper batsman AB de Villiers at his usual batting position of No. 4.

De Villiers, who was ideally expected to come in to bat in the seventh over, eventually entered in the 17th over behind all-rounders in Washington Sundar and Shivam Dube. Needing to score from the word go, the 36-year old player departed after scoring 2 (5) while batting at No. 6.

“We had a chat, a message from outside about left-right combination and we wanted to go with it because they had two leggies [Ravi Bishnoi and Murugan Ashwin].

“Sometimes things don’t come off. We’re pretty happy with the decisions we took, but it didn’t come off. Having 170 [171/6] was a decent score,” Kohli added.