What wrong is RCB doing?

Standing 7th in the points table at the moment, having lost 5 out of their 7 matches, the Virat Kohli led Royal Challengers Bangalore have once again disappointed all their fans.

One man army - Virat Kohli, the captain of the Royal Challengers Bangalore

After the auctions, RCB looked like a decent squad on paper, who seemed very capable to not only qualify for the play-offs, but go on and win the title for the first time [the tournament is not yet over, it still is possible but looks very difficult]. All the RCB fans after the auctions were "Ee sala cup namdhe!", which means that this time the cup is ours! All the fans had high hopes from Virat & Co. this season, but unfortunately the team hasn't been able to deliver thus far.

So, where has RCB gone wrong? What is the reason that they are losing almost every match? Well there are a couple of factors which I have listed below.

• Team Selection

IPL is in its 11th year and RCB are still struggling to get the team combination right. If you look at the teams they played in all the seven matches, not even a single team seemed to be their best team.

In their first few matches, they fielded both Brendon McCullum and Quinton de Kock at the top of the order. And as per me, if you play both of those two openers, the whole balance of the team starts to break down. We all know that only 4 overseas players are allowed in the team, and with AB De Villiers for sure being one of the four, if you play these two together, only one spot remains for some other foreign player to make it into the Playing XI.

Now, if you take Colin de Grandhomme as the fourth overseas player in the team all of a sudden your already weak bowling attack starts to look even more weaker, so for sure you cannot afford to play Colin de Grandhomme. If you play either one of Chris Woakes or Tim Southee looking to strengthen your bowling unit, your lower middle order, which is your finishing department, starts to look feeble.

And that is the reason why you cannot field both of McCullum and Quinton de Kock in your team. Well yes, RCB played both of these two openers yesterday night as well, but the case was different yesterday. AB De Villiers was not present in the team due to a viral-fever and that is why they managed to play both of these players.

After three matches, Virat decided to replace McCullum with Corey Anderson, which seemed to be sensible as Corey would provide strength to the middle order and also would give his captain a couple of overs.

But, Corey Anderson neither performed with the bat, nor with the ball and indeed was responsible for his team's losses to an extent as well. Not sure why, but Virat showed a lot of faith in him and played him for three consecutive matches, before he was finally replaced last night. And yes, Corey was playing in spite of Colin de Grandhomme sitting on the bench. Virat's captaincy has also let us down this season.


Here is the team which I've created from the squad which seems to have the right balance and looks like the best XI from the 23-member squad:

1. Brendon McCullum 
2. Parthiv Patel (WK)
3. Virat Kohli (Captain)
4. AB De Villiers
5. Mandeep Singh
6. Colin de Grandhomme
7. Washington Sundar
8. Tim Southee
9. Umesh Yadav
10. Murugan Ashwin
11. Yuzvendra Chahal

I have removed Quinton de Kock from the team to get the right balance. I could have removed Brendon McCullum as well, but had I removed McCullum, then I must've played the out of form Manan Vohra instead of Parthiv at the top of the order. I see Parthiv as a more explosive batsman than Vohra who can take full advantage of the powerplay overs along with Baz.

• Virat's Captaincy

To all of our surprise, Virat Kohli has let us down as a captain. I'm saying this being a Virat fan myself indeed. I'm not that much sure about how much Virat's inputs are considered in the player auctions, but I'm sure that he has the final say on the Playing XI. He hasn't been fielding the correct team, has made some very bad decisions on the field... hugely disappointed with the skipper. 

It has been seen that Yuzvendra Chahal, who is your best bowler, hasn't completed his spell on three occasions thus far in the Vivo IPL 2018. Well, it doesn't really matter if he is even going for runs. He is your strike bowler, who has proven himself in the past, and he must be completing his full quota of four overs. 

No wonder why, but Virat has also shown a lot of faith in Corey Anderson. He has handed over the ball to Corey Anderson in the death overs. Against Mumbai, neither one of Chahal, Woakes or Washington completed their spells, but Corey Anderson got 4 overs, despite giving runs at 11.75 per over. 

There was a similar kind of a story against the Chennai Super Kings as well. Virat Kohli bowled out Umesh Yadav & Yuzvendra Chahal in the twelfth over itself, and once again showed a lot of faith in Corey Anderson, giving him the ball to bowl at the death to Mahendra Singh Dhoni. We all knew that RCB had lost the game then and there itself. He gave away 58 runs in 3.4 overs at an economy rate of above 15. 

I literally was extremely shocked by the way Virat had captained his team. One thing is clear from this... Virat Kohli is the official captain of Team India, but there is an unofficial captain in MS Dhoni who has played a very important role in India's rise in limited overs cricket in the recent past. He has guided Virat Kohli throughout and we also have seen him taking up the captaincy in pressure situations. Best captain in the world for a reason - MS Dhoni. 

I hope that Virat Kohli learns from his mistakes, makes the appropriate changes in the team, contact MS Dhoni for a couple of captaincy tips and storm his team through to the play-offs like he did in 2016! Best wishes RCB! #PlayBold

Cheers,

Sparsh