Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Virat Kohli had not given a second thought in taking the blame for dropping Kings XI Punjab skipper KL Rahul twice, which contributed significantly to their 97-run defeat in Dubai on Thursday.
Kohli was the first to step up and take responsibility after the massive defeat, as he admitted that his dropped chances gave their opposition some extra runs that took the game away from them.
“I have to stand in front and take the brunt of it, not the best day in the office, couple of important chances of KL when he was set and that cost us 35-40 runs at a later stage. Maybe if we restricted them to 180 we wouldn’t have been under pressure from ball one of the chase,” said Kohli at the post-match presentation.
“We know exactly where we went wrong and I have to put my hand up and say a couple of important changes went down. There are days when these kinds of things happen on the cricket field, they happen and we have to accept them.
“We have had a good game (against Sunrisers Hyderabad), we have had a bad game and now it is time to move on and learn from the mistakes we made,” said Kohli.
People were talking after youngster Devdutt Padikkal fell in the first over and, chasing such a huge total, Australian wicket-keeper batsman Josh Philippe walked in to bat at number 3 before Kohli.
On sending the young Josh Philippe ahead of himself at number 3, Kohli said,
“He has batted at the top of the order for Western Australia and done well in the BBL as well, early days in the tournament so we thought we will maximise his ability and see how we go from thereon. We thought we will give ourselves a bit of depth in the middle overs.”
The Australian wicketkeeper-batsman had batted in the middle-order in RCB’s first game against Sunrisers.
In their next match, RCB will lock horns with defending champions Mumbai Indians on September 28.