Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) Director of Cricket Mike Hesson expressed his disappointment with their bowlers’ plan against Shardul Thakur, who hammered RCB bowlers all around the ground. The Kolkata Knight Riders all-rounder was at his absolute best as he smashed 68 runs off just 29 balls to take away the game from RCB.
Thakur played an astonishing knock at the full-packed Eden Gardens, to take his team from a struggling position of 89-5 to post a match-winning total of 204-7 at the end of 20 overs.
“I think the way we bowled to Shardul was not right. In terms of what we talked about and what we were able to execute. That gave them a little bit of momentum and once he got some momentum and confidence, he was harder to bowl to. We were very good with the ball last game, but today we were a bit off,” speaking on RCB bowlers’ performance, Mike Hesson said.
Royal Challengers Bangalore bowlers bowled brilliantly well to restrict the two times for 89-5 at the 11-over mark dismissing their skipper Nitish Rana and dangerous Andre Russell before Shardul Thakur took on the bowlers straight away from the word-go to hit his first half-century in IPL.
Speaking on their strategy to play Kolkata Knight Riders’ spinners’ performance, Mike Hesson feels it is important to have set batters in the middle to play them, which the RCB batters failed to do.
“All in all, we knew that Narine and Chakravarthy were going to be hard work, on that surface, and we had two set batters but unfortunately we kept getting beaten on the inside. So, that is certainly something that we are aware of because they predominantly bowl googlies,” Mike Hesson added.
Varun Chakravarthy, Suyash Sharma, and Sunil Narine combined to pick up 9 wickets for their team, with RCB batters found no clue to their spin web.
David Willey Was Exceptional Today – Mike Hesson On RCB’s Positive From The Second Game
Speaking on the positive from the game, Mike Hesson said that David Willey and Karn Sharma played exceptionally well in the bowling for RCB and believes that they gave away more runs in the back end of the innings which created pressure on their batters.
“Lie at the end of any game, we need to reflect on things that we did well and Willey was exceptional today, Karn Sharma played nicely, but outside of that, we were soundly beaten. From a batting point of view, we were probably chasing 35 more than we wanted to, and that created pressure. So yeah, plenty to work on,” Mike Hesson concluded.
Royal Challengers Bangalore will take on Lucknow Super Giants in their third game of the league in their home game on April 10.