IPL 2020: Not the best day in the office, says Virat Kohli after KXIP defeat

Royal Challengers Bangalore suffered their first loss at the hands of Kings Eleven Punjab in IPL 2020 on Thursday. It wasn’t the best day at the office for the RCB skipper, who dropped KL Rahul twice during his swashbuckling knock. RCB skipper first dropped him in the seventeenth over when KL Rahul was on 83. It was followed by another dropped catch in the following over. KL Rahul had scored 89 runs at that time. The KXIP skipper went onto score 132 runs off just 69 balls.

“I have to stand in front and take the brunt of it, not the best day in the office, couple of important chances of KL when he was set and that cost us 35-40 runs at a later stage. Maybe if we restricted them to 180 we wouldn’t have been under pressure from ball one of the chase. We know exactly where we went wrong and I have to put my hand up and say shoud’ve led from the front and taken those two chances,” said Kohli at the post-match presentation.

In pursuit of a mammoth total, RCB sent Josh Philippe at number three and pushed Virat Kohli down to number four. The decision didn’t pay off well as RCB collapsed for 109. Explaining the reason behind the same, RCB skipper stated that Philippe has represented Western Australia at the top of the order and thus wanted him to bat at his favourable position.

“He (Philippe) has batted at the top of the order for Western Australia and done well in the BBL as well, early days in the tournament so we thought we will maximise his ability and see how we go from thereon. We thought we will give ourselves a bit of depth in the middle overs,” Kohli added.