4 reasons why Royal Challengers Bangalore have been poor so far
With four matches gone, the star-studded Royal Challengers (RCB) Bangalore find themselves at the seventh place in the table and after last night’s loss to Mumbai Indians, their problems seem to be escalating. Considering the fact that they did reasonably well at the auctions this year and improved their bowling, many expected them to be one of the best teams in the tournament.
Needless to say, RCB can still make it into the top four because they have 10 games to play but over the course of these first four games, some glaring issues with the team have come to the fore which need to be fixed if they are to entertain the possibility of making it to the knockout rounds.
Here are four reasons why they have failed to assert their authority in the tournament thus far.
#4 Ineffectiveness of the bowling attack
Despite Umesh Yadav’s heroics in the game against Kings XI Punjab, the fact remains that the RCB bowling attack has been one of the least effective ones in the IPL so far. In the very first game against the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), they could not defend 176 and in their last two games, their attack conceded totals of 217 (against Rajasthan Royals) and 213 (last night against Mumbai Indians).
The spin bowling department, fronted by two extremely competent limited overs bowlers in Washington Sundar and Yuzvendra Chahal has not delivered the good so far for the RCB. The control that top class spin duos (like Narine and Kuldeep Yadav for instance) provide a team is absent here.
On the other hand, their expensive overseas all-rounder Chris Woakes has blown hot and cold so far. The lack of pace and imagination in his bowling has often been cruelly exposed. RCB’s death bowling has been nothing short of disastrous so far and in fact, their coach Daniel Vettori stated that he is ‘frustrated’ with it.