What went wrong?
Royal Challengers from Bangalore had the best batting line up among the 8 IPL Teams this year. Still they could not beat Mumbai Indians in the first Semi-Final on 21st April.
Team RCB won 4 out of first 5 matches they played. After that, though the team was expected to perform even better as the other overseas player had started to join in, RCB could manage just 3 wins out of remaining 9 games. coach and Captain need to analyse what went wrong during these 9 games. Though RCB coud still manage to reach SF, I hardly had any expectations left from the Team due to the continuous failures.
Star Players failed to perform
K. Pietersen and C. White joined team around the end of March when team had won 4 out of 5 matches already and was looking strong contender to reach SFs. KP and White got into the team right away. KP played couple of good innings against KXIP and KKR, and helped team to win them. White was unlucky to not get enough of batting in the middle. Ross Taylor joined team in first week of April and was supposed to thrash the bowlers all over the ground. But it didn’t happen as expected.
Kallis disappointed
Though Kallis had a good start at the start of IPL, the second half didn’t see big scores from him. His strike rate was not good enough and it often put the other batsmen under pressure to score at high SR from the first ball.
Dravid under utilized
One thing which amazes me that a player of Dravid’s calibre was made to bat at No.7 in some of the matches. Kallis was chosen ahead of him to play the anchor role. But when Kallis failed in later matches, the places were not exchanged. Dravid though performed well whenever he got his chances, but he is supposed to be playing in top order in any form of cricket.
Death over bowling not effective
Bowlers bowling overs 16-20 are to be dead accurate with line and length. These are the overs when batsmen look to go for big shots. And bowlers shoud be bowling perfect yorkers and bouncers to keep batsmen under control. RCB bowlers failed to do so and they gave up too many runs too often.
Too many changes
There were too many changes done to accomodate foreign players. As only 4 players were to be picked, and players like Taylor, Pietersen, Kallis, Steyn, White etc. were to be fitted into team, lots of changes were done. And that hampered the flow quite a lot. Lots of changes were made in each game and this resulted in players not performing as per their potential.
Team RCB has now qualified for the Champions Trophy 2010 and I am looking forward to see RCB produce better game and lift the trophy. Good Luck Team RCB.
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