RCB as the dimension battle in Dubai

“We couldn’t have returned to the room after losing the game,” Washington Sundar said in his interview with the station. The only pitcher to throw four no-limit overs for 12 runs in a night when two teams combined to hit more than 400 runs, was left with a dry throat for another brutal helping of late hitting that is redefining the realms of it. ‘ possible ‘in T20 cricket.

A few minutes later, at the virtual press conference, when the raw emotions at the end had passed him, Sundar said it was ‘fun’, one more word in tune with his performance and the result for Royal Challengers Bangalore. More telling, he used the word “plan” three times in a press conference that lasted less than four minutes.

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It is extraordinary how precise T20 cricketers have to be with their ‘plans’ in moments of extreme duress like the one Sundar and his RCB teammates encountered during the final moments of regular time in this game. The Mumbai Indians had inexplicably pushed their way out of the hole of defeat and were looking at an equation that said “It takes 5 to win with 2 balls.” Then Isuru Udana had Ishan Kishan catch one less than an incredible hundred at the deep edge of the half-gate.

As a heartbroken Kishan crawled off the field, the Sri Lankan bowler turned and pointed in the direction of RCB’s dug-out, who had planned this sacking for him. Udana had crossed the line by two sixes already in the final and had thrown this ball, slower and wider off the stump. The shortest limit was at Kishan’s swing arc, but Udana’s wide line had forced him to drag his work toward the fielder.

Then the strike changed. Udana ran over and offered Kieron Pollard a slower angled short ball through him, a seemingly poor delivery to this giant cricketer who hit 56 on 23. But it wasn’t as bad as a fast, well-aimed goalie with a leg fine in the circle as Jasprit Bumrah would discover in PowerPlay. Pollard shot with authority in front of the squad and divided the two outfielders at depth. However, the ball was thrown a bit off the rope and crashed into the boundary fences. Tie tied.

Virat Kohli smiled shyly. Tying a match that she had apparently put in her pocket half an hour ago was not part of her plan. But forcing Pollard, and every other hitter in Mumbai, to hit the longest limit of 82 square meters was. The other side, the one Kishan repeatedly attacked, was only 68 meters away.

Those 14 meters were perhaps the difference between another heartbreak and an eventual Super Over victory. Sundar and his teammates did not want to return to the room as the losers of the game, because they had planned the hell out of this game, including this small disparity in the distance to the two square limits from this new field to the extreme. to the right (from the end of the pavilion) at the Dubai International Stadium.

Most batting is a cause-and-effect reaction to what the bowler does. Not in T20 cricket anymore – here batsmen line up their shots regardless of the ball thrown. Understanding angles and dimensions therefore becomes an intricate part of pre-match tactical planning. It helped RCB that they were playing the third game in a row at the stadium as Mumbai exited Abu Dhabi for the first time. The field was dry and scruffy, so Kohli filled his team with two wristbands (Adam Zampa and Yuzvendra Chahal), one finger (Sundar), and Isuru Udana, an experienced cutter practitioner.

With a grand total and a larger cap on one side, Sundar returned to PowerPlay bowling duties. A spinner doesn’t necessarily pose a threat to Rohit Sharma on showdown plays, however Sundar was on to something here with his slightly short lengths with his quick high-arm release. Rohit bit the bait instinctively, but it was undone by a combination of the slippery nature of Sundar’s delivery and the long boundary next to the leg, where Pawan Negi decided to catch.

The dolls, when they arrived, followed the plan until RCB’s TA difference, which hit a pair from left to right through its 20 overs to interrupt any plan to protect one side of the ground, Mumbai was left with two left-handers: de Kock and Kishan. Kohli had Chahal, the slower and cheesy of the two, throw with the big limit to his left while Zampa, from the other end, threw flatter googlies. This was the RCB captain telling the batsman: If you drag Chahal over the longest part of the ground or hit Zampa against the spin, you’re the better man.

A steadily increasing pace meant de Kock took a chance on Chahal and failed. Hardik Pandya met an identical fate against Zampa with substitute Pawan Negi, charged with controlling that great limit, placing himself under both sacks. At the end of the 15 overs, both leggies had identical figures of 1 for 26 of their three overs each, successfully pushing the required rate to 18. The game was surely over.

Except, as Kohli and company must have learned yesterday, while goading the Rajasthan Royals during their seemingly unlikely chase, violent plot twists are always just around the corner. In cricket, particularly in the T20s, you always have to be philosophical about the relationship between planning and outcome simply because of the number of variables involved. In RCB’s case, the spray set up nicely before the deaths, Kishan and Pollard threw more caution into the wind, and Negi switched to a reverse cup and found that catching wasn’t easy.

While RCB’s leg-turning duo landed 49 of their last 12 balls, somewhere in another team room in a UAE hotel, the Mumbai Indians were probably encouraged to go ahead and complete the unthinkable in this chase 202. They had reduced the chase from 90 from 30 to 5 from 2, but the boundary lengths on either side of those glove-hitting marauders had remained the same. And so Udana and RCB stayed true to their preparation and sneaked home to better understand the dimensions.