IPL 2017: 5 things that went wrong for Royal Challengers Bangalore this season

After reaching the finals in the 2016 IPL, a lot was expected from the Royal Challengers Bangalore going into the 2017 season as they had set their sights on their maiden tournament win. Instead, they managed to win just 3 out of their 14 matches and finished as the wooden spoon holders of the tenth edition with just 7 points.

This season saw a completely different RCB outfit as they surrendered to their opposition on numerous occasions. Their players didn’t show any intent, much to the frustration of skipper Virat Kohli. With a game to go, let’s see what went wrong for Kohli and co. in the tenth edition of the extravaganza.

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#5 Injuries

Royal Challengers Bangalore received a huge blow before the start of the season as they were to miss skipper Virat Kohli for the first few matches. It was followed by the news of wicketkeeper-batsman KL Rahul being ruled out of the tournament due to a shoulder injury he sustained during the Test series against Australia.

Rahul had been very consistent until he got injured and his loss was a big jolt for the team management, who expected the likes of Sarfaraz Khan and Mandeep Singh to step-up in the absence of Kohli and Rahul.

But what panned out must have frustrated the team management because Sarfaraz, who showed a lot of promise with the bat for RCB in the last couple of seasons, was forced to pull out of the tournament due to a knee injury.

Adding to these, players like AB de Villiers, Chris Gayle, Samuel Badree and Tymal Mills faced injury problems throughout the tournament and that made it difficult for the team management from using the same combination for every match.

Extra cover- IPL 2017: The Injured XI

#4 AB de Villiers’s and Virat Kohli’s inconsistency

Christopher Henry Gayle, Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers have been the pillars for Royal Challengers since they started playing for the franchise. Gayle has been inconsistent since the start of 2016 season.

Still, RCB managed to reach the finals in 2016, thanks to the contributions from the bats of Kohli and De Villiers. Gayle was also dropped for a few matches this season due to poor form.

Kohli alone had scored 973 runs in 2016, the most by any batsman in a single edition and AB backed his skipper well by scoring 687 runs in the tournament. In total, these two scored 1660 runs in 2016.

Fast forward a year, the fans expected the duo to resume from where they left in 2016. But, both the batsmen, who were considered as alien by may because of their consistency, showed that they are humans as they failed miserably and that had a big impact on RCB’s fortunes this year.

RCB used 18 members this season and all these players managed to score a total of 1769 runs, which is just 109 less than the runs scored by Kohli and AB in 2016. This is something that shows how the team is dependent on the dynamic duo.

#3 Fragile middle order

Apart from the heroics of Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers, their middle order batsmen came up with a few crucial knocks throughout the 2016 season. KL Rahul had a breakthrough IPL with the bat as he scored 397 runs in 12 innings at an average of over 44 and a strike-rate of 146.

Apart from him, the Indian uncapped players Sarfaraz Khan and Sachin Baby stood up whenever the team needed them.

This time, the team missed the services of Rahul and Sarfaraz due to injuries while Sachin failed to get going whenever he got a chance to bat. With De Villiers completely off-colour, the burden of scoring runs in the middle overs fell on the shoulders of Kedar Jadhav.

Jadhav has been RCB’s best batsman this season but the right-hander hardly got support from his fellow batsmen.

The likes of Shane Watson, Sachin Baby, Mandeep Singh, Stuart Binny etc. were highly inconsistent and that went on to hurt the team on many occasions. Maybe the team management should have tried Harpreet Singh Bhatia, who came in as a replacement for Sarfaraz, as the Madhya Pradesh batsman was in a purple patch in the Indian domestic season.

#2 Nature of the wicket at the Chinnaswamy stadium

Royal Challengers Bangalore is a team that is known to win matches by outscoring the opposition, thanks to their batting might and their not-so-strong bowling unit. Their home ground, Chinnaswamy stadium, is also a high scoring ground as the average first innings score at the venue in the 2016 edition was 197.

The wicket has been often termed as a graveyard for the bowlers and with small boundaries, the venue is a paradise for any batsman.

This season, the wicket is behaving in an unusual manner as the batsmen are struggling to score runs (not when Sunil Narine and Chris Lynn took the RCB bowlers to the cleaners). In the 2016 IPL, the average first innings score in a 20-over game at the venue was 195 while the average score (irrespective of the innings) was 183.

Also in the last four seasons, RCB had an average score of 173 at their home ground. However, this year, they failed to score 160 in even a single innings, their highest score at home being 158/6 in their last game against Kolkata Knight Riders.

With RCB relying a lot on their batting, the wicket at their home ground should have assisted them as Kohli and co. would have bulldozed the opposition with their strong batting line-up instead of putting their faith on their bowling unit.

#1 Absence of a leader in the bowling attack

Just a day before the IPL auction, the Royal Challengers Bangalore received a big blow as their star bowler Mitchell Starc pulled out of the IPL to concentrate on the 2017 Champions Trophy. This left the team without a leader in their bowling attack.

They were left with Sreenath Arvind, Shane Watson and Yuzvendra Chahal in the bowling department.

At the auction, they splashed over 12 crores INR to sign England’s T20 specialist Tymal Mills and also signed Rajasthan’s Aniket Chaudhary and Pawan Negi. Mills showed some promise earlier in the tournament before he became a liability for the team management.

Adding to that, he was forced to miss few matches due to injury. In his absence, RCB tried Adam Milne and the Kiwi did a decent job before he was dropped to accommodate Samuel Badree.

With Watson undergoing a pale patch and Mills not living up to the expectations, Virat Kohli was missing someone who can lead his team’s bowling attack. Once again, it was Chahal, who has been RCB’s saviour with the ball along with his spin twins, Negi and Badree, who bowled well in patches.