Shortly after RCB’s defeat, the cameras focused on Virat Kohli staring off into the distance, for the last time in this game.
It is impossible to avoid starting at the end. As soon as Jason Holder squeezed Navdeep Saini’s delivery behind the point by four to lead Sunrisers Hyderabad to the next Qualifier, the cameras focused on Virat Kohli staring off into the distance, for the last time in this game, before cutting to an announcement. . At the end of an IPL Playoff, it was the losers of the day who were instantly and unmistakably history.
The lovely German word schadenfreude best describes what followed next. Dozens of fans of the tournament, including some cricketers, took to social media to have a little fun in the face of RCB’s misfortune. Thirteen years now … STOP THE COUNT.
A thrilling final loss, a fifth on the rebound, despite mustering just 131 with the bat, was in a sense emblematic of a deeper RCB story – a team constantly striving for balance, walking the tightrope between heroism and caricature, often in the same season, sometimes even in the same game.
Today there was also courage and comedy. The latter came to light in the eleventh final. Moeen Ali, hired for this game to add weight to a struggling medium order, was granted the luxury of a free-throw ball to start his innings. Better yet, the ball was to be delivered by Shahbaz Nadeem, a left-arm spinner with a match-making disadvantage. It was a liberating moment for a team that had been squeezed by first three wickets and a stubborn bowling attack. As fate would have it, Moeen drilled the full ball a little to the right of the extra cover and took off running. Rashid Khan took his time and scored a direct hit and RCB had one of his middle order messiahs take a free kick.
From the events of the first 11 overs in Abu Dhabi, during which RCB hitters had tried their different ways of playing versions of “expressive” hitting, the once illuminating prospect of “maybe this is the year” of the first half. of the season had faded. The cameras naturally sought out the RCB patron, who had taken a corner seat in the last row of the dugout, socially distant from the rest, and apparently weighed down by the weight of the present and the baggage of the past.
Sigmund Freud defines the basis of horror as the uncertainty about whether something is alive or dead. And this surely feels like the fascination for RCB, whose players often play like the elite cricketers that they are. But who somehow seem complicit in their own defeat, who become strangely zombified at a crucial moment, lacking some vital element of life.
Batting had become a problem. Hitting first, more so. But the latter could not be controlled. To fix the tempo problem midway through the innings, Kohli moved to open. Obviously, it had a knock-on effect for the rest of the lineup who already had four changes for this knockout game. Value can be misinterpreted as overconfidence if you don’t work around a stable base, especially if it looks better on paper than at ground level.
Kohli’s attempts to counter Sandeep Sharma’s swing were similar to Aaron Finch’s earlier in the season. But his strategy of walking the field wasn’t enough against the varied challenges of 6-foot-7-inch Jason Holder. The Barbadian got the ball to rise abruptly and had his man caught by the side of the leg. Having lost his ninth pitch in 15 games, RCB had now lost one of his two batting axes in the second over of the game.
Devdutt Padikkal, the one and only promising steady at the top, hit two shots: a cut and a straight shot at the fielder. But because the idea was to maximize PowerPlay, he fell to the first ball of the next over, an ill-timed pull that found the middle of the wicket. Finch seemed to have the experience to adjust to a new game plan at No. 3, but he died looking to boost the scoring rate. Moments later, Moeen had his mishap. It was this lack of a supporting hand for AB de Villiers that made the difference between victory and defeat.
“Maybe a little nervous, a little hesitant,” Kohli reasoned after the game. “Like I said, we need to be more expressive with the bat. We probably didn’t have any phase in the game where we moved away from the opposition. We only allowed bowlers to play in the areas they wanted to and they didn’t. Put them low enough. pressure, I think. “
All that remains at the end is a bit of confusion. Playing with the five batters they made ended up becoming a punt rather than a strategy. And when two of those five returned for this single elimination game in a modified lineup, the ploy became more questionable. It was a defeat that simply did not leave Kohli’s troops out of the competition, once again showing that his strategy was based more on false bravado and machismo than tact.
And so ends a campaign of fresh new ideas and tactical approaches, one that promised the excitement of so much more before exhausting itself to an eerily familiar finale. The wait continues.
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