A dejected Virat Kohli could not say much after Royal Challengers Bangalore suffered a crushing 118 runs loss at the hands of Sunrisers Hyderabad on Sunday. The Bangalore-based outfit have now lost all of their opening three games of this season so far. Barring the toss, nothing went Royal Challengers way in the game.
That's that from Hyderabad. The @SunRisers win by a huge margin of 118 runs against the RCB?? pic.twitter.com/i1sgwuTgoh
— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) March 31, 2019
Virat Kohli’s decision to bowl first turned out to be poor one as Jonny Bairstow and David Warner hit centuries. The Sunrisers openers added 185 runs for the first wicket, helping the last year’s finalists to post a daunting total of 231 for 2.
In reply, the Royal Challengers batsmen came up a cropper once again. Mohammad Nabi ran through the middle-order to all but end the game inside the powerplay itself. He dismissed Parthiv Patel, Shimron Hetmyer and AB de Villiers inside four overs to reduce the Royal Challengers to 22 for 3. Sandeep Sharma then dismissed Virat Kohli in the seventh over to seal the Bangalore-based outfit’s game.
At one stage, it looked like Bangalore would not even reach 50 after being reduced to 35 for 6. But thanks to Colin de Grandhomme’s 37, they managed to post a respectable total.
Speaking after the game, Virat Kohli was at loss of words, saying:
“One of our worst losses ever. Liteally nothing I can explain. Nothing went right for us from ball 1 until our last wicket fell in the second innings. We were outplayed in all departments by a quality side. They showed that they are a champion side – they were finalists last time and beat us in the final (in 2016).
Kohli also had a word of praise for Warner and Bairstow.
“Credit to them (Warner and Bairstow) – we could have tried a few different things, like pace off the ball. But once those guys got in, they just kept going – you need a few things to go your way, and a few catches fell in between fielders. They were world-class today and they deserve to be on the winning side.”