Bowlers executed the plan well, laments catches dropped: Brendon McCullum

After yet another loss in the Indian Premier League (IPL 2018), the Royal Challengers Bangalore find themselves at the bottom of the table with the same number of points as Delhi Daredevils and Mumbai Indians. Now, they need to win a minimum 6 matches out of 7 to stand any chance of making it to the playoffs.

However, when RCB finished their innings on 175 runs, especially on the back of their skipper’s unbeaten 68, one would’ve felt that RCB would have indeed had the upper hand following their innings. However, that was not the case as KKR scored the runs quite comfortably after an unbeaten 62-run innings from Chris Lynn.

The Kohli-led side made a bevvy of costly mistakes on the field during the run defence. Debutant Murugan Ashwin made a mess of a straightforward chance in his 4th over of the innings despite having been one of the key bowlers for his side. RCB were poor in the field as well and allowed a couple of boundaries to sneak through.

Chances didn’t go into the hands

While many have criticised the RCB bowling, opener Brendon McCullum felt that their bowlers did a very good job but were unlucky. McCullum added that the coaching staff had worked hard with the bowlers and had a set plans to bowl against Narine and Lynn.

“Those guys [Lynn and Narine] have played really well against us in the past, and we put in a lot of effort today. I think they [Nehra and McDonald] put in a lot of hard work into how we’re going to bowl at Sunil Narine and Chris Lynn in particular. It is frustrating when you create chances and they don’t go to hand,” said the former New Zealand captain.

McCullum was of the thought that had they got the wickets early, the result would’ve been a different one. According to the 36-year old, the RCB bowlers executed their plans well but failed to get wickets.

“I thought the way we bowled in the first six overs, the scoreboard probably didn’t reflect how well we executed our plans, and that can happen sometimes when they’ve got a guy who likes to free their arms. If we had got early wickets on the back of efforts we put, I think the result would’ve been a lot different,” said the 36-year McCullum who had provided a decent start with Quinton de Kock.

He added that the fielders didn’t back up the performance of the bowlers and allowed the chances to go through. “I think we had our chances in the field and we didn’t take those. Don’t want to be too harsh on the bowlers. We should’ve backed them up with our fielding,” said McCullum after the game.

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