The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : It is not the end of the road for RCB

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It is not the end of the road for RCB

The way forward is not to panic but retain confidence, writes Anil Kumble

This indeed has been a strange tournament thus far. Sometimes you are caught up on a slow, low wicket, at other times the ball suddenly whizzes around and occasionally you come across a belter.

Changing scenario

All this reflects on the points table where positions have been changing like crazy as all teams struggle to cope with the varying conditions every other day.

Then again, that is what makes us believe than one loss, however bad, like the one against Rajasthan Royals on Thursday, does not in any way mean the end of the world.

At Centurion that morning, the toss was vital. It had rained almost the whole of Wednesday night and there was some rain on Thursday morning too.

Of course, any team that relies too much on the spin of coin going in their favour is not going about it the right away.

Overall, we played poor cricket and there’s no way we deserved to win.

Once you come across a pitch like that, with all the moisture, batting naturally gets tough. Why, the bounce and movement surprised even our batsman in form, Kallis.

And once the rest of the batsmen saw what was happening to Kallis, the immediate effect on them was to get more circumspect. Which in the end left us with 100-odd to defend, when we needed at least 130 or so.

It is not as the match was lost then and there. When you are trying to defend such a low score, you’ve to get back and reduce the opposition to 3-3 or thereabouts to be in with a chance. Once that didn’t happen, the writing was on the wall.

We did have our plans at the break on how to go about the defence, talked about the need to create opportunities and so on but then a few hits landed in no mans land, catches didn’t come to hand and Rajasthan were away.

No need to panic

The way forward is not to panic but retain confidence and belief in each other. There is still every chance for us to get to the semis and that’s what we will carry with us to Port Elizabeth for Sunday’s game against Mumbai.

We can take on to the field the confidence of having beaten them comprehensively in our last encounter. Also the fact that the pitch at PE is rather slow, makes it better for us. It is a question of choosing the right combination for that surface.

Off the field, in the days leading to the match against Rajasthan, our boys had a good break, heading off to Mabula Lodge, a jungle resort owned by Vijay Mallya. They had a blast watching the lions up close. It was quite an experience for the younger lot in the team. Unfortunately, for family reasons, I couldn’t join them.

Hawkeye Communications

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