IPL 2019: Are poor squad options hurting RCB, or the poor captaincy skills of Virat Kohli?
Anyone who witnessed the 'Royals' battle it out last night in Jaipur would have realized the lack of killer instinct RCB posed, both with the bat and the ball. The Bangalore-based franchise have got off to the worst possible start in IPL 2019, and currently find themselves at the bottom of the IPL points table.
Do RCB's struggles boil down to the fact that they possess poor options in their squad who are apprehensive of executing their skills? Or are their options being amplified and exaggerated due to poor captaincy by Virat Kohli?
The answer is down to individual interpretation. And I have my own thoughts on the events that that unfolded in Jaipur last night.
RCB were put into bat by RR on a beautiful batting wicket. The innings unraveled in predictable fashion, as has been the case all season, with RCB losing their 3 top guns by the 11th over with a mere 73 on the board.
This brings me to my first observation. Shimron Hetmyer, the famed hard-hitter from West Indies, has been failing and looks utterly uncomfortable on the crease at the No. 4 slot in the batting order. But the captain and the team management failed to notice this and persisted with him for the fourth match running.
That said, the failure of the trio was compensated by an anchoring innings from the veteran Parthiv Patel and a late flourish by Marcus Stoinis and Moeen Ali.
The target of 159 never looked convincing from the get-go, but what made a bad situation worse can easily be attributed to poor captaincy.
Umesh Yadav and Navdeep Saini started off the proceedings for RCB and were taken to the cleaners in their first overs. The issue at hand was not their economy rates but the fact that they weren't causing any problems for the batsmen whatsoever apart from the one instance where Saini drew an edge off Jos Buttler, only for captain Kohli to drop the chance at slip.
Kohli failed to recognize this important aspect and persisted with Saini till the end of the powerplay. Moreover, it has long been established that Yadav is at his best with the new ball and not in the death overs and yet, Kohli saved him to bowl the last over.
On a track where spinners were causing all sorts of problems for the batsmen, Kohli decided to give Moeen Ali only one over, in which he went for 14 runs. The fact that he stuck with Saini, Yadav and Stoinis, who all had similar economy rates, but did not give another over or two to Ali, leaves me dumbfounded. There is clearly a lack of creativity and imagination in Kohli's captaincy.
If a rigid captaincy regime could lead to a last-over finish yesterday night, one can only wonder whether RCB would be in pole position to cross the line in case their captaincy was inspired and out-of-the-box. It is the job of the captain to make his average players look invincible, and Kohli will do himself and RCB a huge favour by picking the relevant chapter out of MS Dhoni's manual as soon as possible.