The Royal Challengers Banglore (RCB) were one of the best teams last season, finishing runners-up in IPL 2016. But they failed to carry that form into IPL 2017, where they are languishing at the bottom of the table, and Mumbai Indians (MI) coach Ricky Ponting believes KL Rahul's absence from the tenth edition of the competition was a big blow for the Challengers.
Rahul, even before IPL 2017 started, was unavailabe due to his shoulder injury. He was an instrumental player last season, when they were in a dream run. Rahul scored an impressive 397 runs from his 12 appearances for the RCB.
"KL Rahul is a massive loss for them. He had a terrific back-end to last season. He did some amazing things last year so him not being at the top has been a big loss. He and Virat were a pretty formidable opening pair last year," cricket.com.au quoted Ponting as saying.
"You couldn't argue with what they did last year and they've played a bit of cricket with each other in the Indian Test team for the few months leading in to the IPL. So they would have had a good dynamic there at the top of the order and unfortunately that's been missing for them."
Though RCB have one of the best batting line-up, which includes AB De Villiers, Chris Gayle and Virat Kohli as their superstars, in the competition, they have collectively failed. As far as their high standards are concerned, their bat could not dominate the bowlers like the last season.
While De Villiers has scored 216 runs in IPL 2017, Kohli has managed 250 and Gayle an ordinary 152. Such stats speak volumes about the RCB's failure this season. They are a batting-heavy side but after the big guns of RCB failed up front, the three-time runners-up were only asking for trouble. The same has been witnessed in IPL 2017.
"Their big name players just aren't standing up like they did last year. They got on an amazing roll at the back end of last year's tournament when Kohli was playing out of his skin, de Villiers was playing well, Gayle was chipping in and Watson was doing a good job with bat and ball," Ponting said.
"But so far Kohli has done next to nothing, there's been flashes in the pan from Gayle and AB de Villiers, but the consistency just hasn't been there."
Though they have been shockingly poor, RCB will hope to end their season on a high when they face Delhi Daredevils in their last match of the season on Sunday, May 14.
