Tactical RCB makes your boat rock sideways

When members of Royal Challengers Bangalore reflect on their gameplay at the dramatically luxurious Waldorf Astoria Hotel that oversees the ocean, they will wonder if they were involved in a T20 game or were actually characters from the Titanic movie. In which the hours passed like a breeze, full of pomp and grandeur, striding across the deck like royalty, tactically outscoring others in games before crashing into a giant glacier.

From a safe position after the PowerPlay, the Kings XI Punjab forced RCB to put their feet in the sea and, in a handful of overs, were trapped. The cricket order they wanted to establish was changed. Pairings. Leg spinner, left-handed hitters, conservation.

Let’s talk about the numbers that will lead to a lot of meows. Since the start of the 2018 IPL, AB de Villiers (8) and Virat Kohli (6) have a combined total of 14 expulsions in 22 innings of competition. The Kings XI Punjab obviously knew those numbers and brought Murugan Ashwin back and paired him with Ravi Bishnoi, just as they had in the reverse match in Dubai.

So when Aaron Finch was cleared by a KXIP legpinner for the second time in this IPL, Washington Sundar went through balls to hit in the seventh. Just a day before, he had talked about working on his power hitting and had expressed his desire to win a game for RCB with his bat. But within five minutes of his entries, there was still bewilderment. The cameras were focused on the Royal Challengers Bangalore excavation and then on the air-conditioned pavilion of Sharjah’s cricket stadium, where De Villiers was sitting. He? With all your gifts? Not sent? Why?

“We had a chat,” Kohli would explain later. “There was a message from outside about left hand-right hand [combination] and we had a discussion about it and we wanted to move on because they had two legs and that could have kept them out of the game. ”

Except it wasn’t. Ashwin continued and Glenn Maxwell, the spinner, entered. The problem with lower order hitters with hitting pedigree sent to order is that they can sometimes feel compelled to hit correctly, especially on more difficult courts. Sundar hit full balls to long balls or shoved short balls behind the square for ones. When he finally tried to hit M. Ashwin, he perished, scoring 13 out of 14. He was now eleventh, but RCB stayed true to their pairing doctrine and another southpaw, Shivam Dube, withdrew.

While RCB played smartly in Sharjah’s previous encounter against Kolkata Knight Riders by playing an additional bowler, KXIP had up to eight potential bowling options (including Deepak Hooda and Chris Gayle) for this one. KL Rahul may not have anticipated this two-pronged counterattack of his best laid plans, but he was able to adapt to a clearly shifting pattern of play. Making the most of the lefties’ presence, he got four overs from Maxwell, his sixth designated pitcher, for 28 runs. He even kept an Ashwin on the bench for when De Villiers decided to leave.

Kohli, on the other side of this tactical cat and mouse, was to blame for the team getting caught up in this tactical vortex. After hitting three-four of his first seven balls in an ominous display of intent, the RCB captain went through 7-15 overs scoring 24 runs on 23 limitless deliveries.

The pitch, with its slow pace and grip for spinners, made hitting difficult. Even de Villiers, before showing Muggles about wizardry during his 73 * off 33 two nights ago, had done 10 out of 10 before unleashing himself. By delaying his arrival until the 17th, where he had yet to start against an over from M. Ashwin, RCB had not given one of its best players the luxury of a fighter.

The 33 balls Sundar and Dube took for their 36 runs could have been theirs and Kohli’s to set up the most wasteful attack on death in this IPL (KXIP concedes at 13.30 in the 16-20 overs). Instead, they both fell into the space of two balls.

The pairings are all very well, but T20 think tanks can sometimes get too focused on them. Sundar, who was pulled from PowerPlay bowling duties to target Chris Gayle hitting No. 3, managed to keep his man in check. But once Gayle survived a slow phase in an unfavorable match, she departed – favorable match or not. . In the most telling statistic of a T20 game played on small, determined terrain on the final ball, KXIP hit 14 sixes while RCB, which had its most distinguished six-hitter padded for 16 overs, hit just 8.

Tactical tactics, it is said, will remain central to the Mike Hesson-Simon Katich regime. His tracks have been seen through this season, straight from the auction table. There they deliberately let two of their targets, Dale Steyn and Isuru Udana, not sell twice before picking them up for base price. This, as Kohli commented, was one that didn’t come out. The tide of his tournament hasn’t turned, just that his ship has been tossed sideways.