IPL 2019: It is RCB players who need to step up and not their captain who needs to step down

RCB on 5th April, suffered their fifth consecutive loss this season. They have failed to score even a single point in the points table and have not managed to find their best playing XI even after 5 matches.

Virat Kohli has been leading RCB for quite some time now and with a change in the squad this year, fans were hoping that they would be a change in the team's fortunes too. However, the results and games have proved to be opposite.

Amidst all of this, a lot of RCB fans and people from around the world are calling for Virat Kohli's resignation from captaincy. They are saying that it is due to his poor captaincy that this team is losing and they are calling for a change in captaincy. Memes on RCB's defeats and Kohli's captaincy have been circulated and various panels have also come to a conclusion that his captaincy is not upto the mark.

However, if we look into the matter closely, we can observe that more than Virat Kohli's captaincy it is his players who haven't performed either with the bat or with the ball and that is what needs to change. Virat Kohli has proved his captaincy skills on many occasions and there is a reason why he is the captain of the No.1 ranked test team and No.2 ranked ODI and T20 teams. There is a reason why India have held the Test mace under his captaincy for three consecutive years now and the reason is because the players were performing and were fulfilling the roles that was expected of them.

A captain can only win matches if his players perform. In RCB's first game, only one of Kohli's 11 players scored above 10 runs and any captain would have failed to defend that total. In the second game, the last ball was a no-ball which wasn't give by the umpire and there was little anyone could do. In the third game, again, only one out of the top 6 batsmen managed to score above 10 runs and it was a shameful defeat for them. Had any one of the players stepped up that day, they would have won the match and even in the last two matches, it was the players who didn't perform.

Virat Kohli cannot do much if the players give away they wickets or bowl poorly. It is true that Kohli probably hasn't got his team selections right, but every player selected in the team are up to the mark and need to perform whenever they are asked to. So what if the pitch condition doesn't match the team strengths, the players still need to put their hand up and take responsibility and win matches for the team. In the last game against KKR, so what if Andre Russell was hitting the ball well, one of the bowlers should have put his hand up and said that he would get Andre Russell out or bowl the dot balls to make the equation impossible to chase.

Quite agreeably the players do need an environment to perform. No one is denying that they might not get that quality of the environment in the RCB camp. They might be under pressure. They might not be able to express themselves to the captain but that isn't poor captaincy and that doesn't require Virat Kohli to resign from his position.

Just 3 years ago, he did lead his team to the finals and that is because he and his teammates were performing. If RCB have anyone to blame for their results, it is their performance and not Virat's captaincy. Instead of blaming the captain, the fans should blame the players for not performing.

In 2017, Mumbai too lost their first 5 games. They didn't lose their games due to Rohit's poor captaincy. They lost the games because the players weren't taking responsibility and not playing upto the level that was asked of them and that is what is happening with RCB now.

If there is anything people around the world should say, it should be asking the players to improve their performance on the field and once the players start hitting the balls right and start getting the yorkers right, they will get the runs and they will get the wickets and with that, they will get the wins too and that is exactly why it is the players of the team who need to step up their performance and not their captain who needs to step down.

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