Bengaluru, Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) skipper Virat Kohli said giving excuses after after every match were not the option, as his team slumped to sixth straight defeat, this time at the hands of Delhi Capitals, here on Sunday.
RCB could only manage 149/9 after being asked to bat first. Kohli scored a patient 41, but the India captain did not get support from the other end. Delhi rode Shreyas Iyer’s 67 to reach the target with seven balls to spare.
“We need to grab our chances when they come our way. We can’t keep giving excuses every game,” Kohli said after the match. “We weren’t good enough again. That’s the whole story of our season, so far,” the India captain admitted.
On his innings, Kohli said he had to stem the rot when AB de Villiers got out. “When AB got out I had to dig deep, the other guys had to strike around me. Stoinis was good, Moeen (Ali) was good and Akshdeep (Nath) too. When there are two senior batsmen and one gets out, the other has to take charge. That’s the whole idea.”
“We thought 160 was going to be competitive. Even 150 was about par. It was quite dry underneath and we knew it would be slow. Not as good as the last game. That was exactly the case in the first innings. We kept losing wickets at regular intervals — couldn’t really explode.”
Kohli also said he wasn’t happy with the way he got out. “The pitch didn’t allow us to play freely. Understanding the situation and targeting specific bowlers, I wasn’t too happy to get out to a ball like that. If I had stayed, we could have added 25-30 more to the total. In hindsight, we can look at all this. But 160 was a competitive total,” the RCB capytain said.
RCB have now lost seven games in a row, six this season. The dry run stretches from May 19 till April, their highest in terms of consecutive losses.
