Chennai: Royal Challengers Bangalore, the under-achievers this IPL, yet again find themselves in a precarious position as they did in 2016 and 2017, having managed just a solitary win from eight matches played so far.
After a disappointing show last year, where they managed to finish sixth in the table, their performance this year has gone from bad to worse.
News Today takes a look at some of the reasons for their poor show.
TOO MUCH DEPENDENCE
RCB’s batting once again depends heavily on AB de Villiers and captain Kohli to keep the score board rolling. Their only win this season came when both these batsmen scored half-centuries to help their team chase 174 against Kings XI Punjab.
Apart from these two, Parthiv Patel and Moeen Ali scored half-centuries this season but are not consistent with the bat.
Marcus Stoinis and Akshdeep Nath are the only other batsmen in the XI who are yet to score big.
RCB invested heavily in Shimron Hetmyer but his poor form added to the woes of RCB’s batting. He looked completely out of sorts, managing just 15 runs in the four games that he played.
RCB at least from now on should look to groom youngsters like Himmat Singh, Devdutt Padikkal and Ranji trophy’s highest run-getter this year, Milind Kumar, so as to reduce the dependency on Kohli and de Villiers at least next year.
FAST BOWLERS LEAK RUNS
Over the past few years, RCB struggled with their bowling as they didn’t have any proper Indian-capped pacer in the squad. It was their bowling that let them down in the previous seasons.
Last year, in the auction, they managed to strengthen their attack by picking all pacers, Umesh Yadav, Mohammad Siraj, Nathan Coulter Nile, Chris Woakes and Tim Southee alongside talented youngsters like Navdeep Saini and Kulwant Khejroliya.
While RCB had a good year with the ball last year with Umesh Yadav and Chris Woakes, shining among the quickies, this year the franchise has released Woakes while Umesh, Siraj and Southee are all leaking runs.
Pacer Navdeep Saini is the only bowler who has done a decent job, clocking speeds of 150 kmph easily. But he is still inexperienced and performing well only in patches.
The same old problem is once again haunting RCB this year, where the bowlers could not defend any total.
LACK OF SPIN OPTION
Yuzvendra Chahal emerged as the premier spinner for India in recent times. Even as RCB is having a disappointing season, he is currently placed joint-second in the leading wicket-takers table, alongside Imran Tahir, picking up 13 wickets so far.
For RCB, though, there is no other spinner to complement Chahal. Moeen Ali is the second best spinner who has just five wickets to his tally. Pawan Negi is currently the other spinner but he is having an inconsistent run.
Surprisingly, RCB is yet to give a game to Washington Sundar, who has done well in IPL so far.
Some loyal RCB fans, though disappointed this year, still believe that the men in red can turn around their fortunes next year. Their slogan now is ‘Next Saala Cup Namde‘.