Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s campaign IPL 2024 campaign went from bad to worse as the Faf Du Plessis-led side slumped to their seventh loss in eight matches. RCB were defeated narrowly by Kolkata Knight Riders on Sunday and as a result, they remain at the bottom of the IPL 2024 points table. RCB currently have just 2 points from 8 matches with a Net Run Rate (NRR) of -1.046. This result was a huge blow to RCB’s hopes of reaching the playoffs but the dream is not completely over. However, right now, their fortunes in the competition are no longer completely in their own hands.
RCB have 6 games remaining in IPL 2024 and six victories will take them to 14 points. Generally, it is considered that teams need 16 points to reach the IPL playoff stage. However, it is possible for teams to qualify with even 14 points but that will require a lot of other results to go in RCB’s favour.
So, the path ahead is quite clear for RCB – win all of their remaining games and hope that the other results go their way to create a situation where they can reach the Top 4 with 14 points.
Coming to the match, KKR posted 222/6 thanks to good knocks from Phil Salt and Shreyas Iyer before Andre Russell took three wickets to clinch the victory for the hosts.
“It was crazy, rules are rules, Virat and myself thought that the ball was higher than the waist (on Kohli’s dismissal), I guess they measured from the popping crease, one team thinks it’s high, the other doesn’t. That’s how the game goes at times,” Faf said at the post-match presentation.
“Then the partnership, it was magnificent (on the Jacks-Patidar partnership), but when you don’t win too many games, some sort of panic sets in and the Narine over was game-changing. You don’t feel that you have time to settle down and bat (on the evolution of the IPL this season), the game doesn’t allow it to do that, obviously you have an extra batter, but in chases like these, you have to keep going.”
“The match-up against Narine, I thought that was the game changing over. The small things, I am actually proud of the boys tonight, the way we bowled and fielded, we did give away a couple of big overs towards the end, but I thought we kept them down to a par score. We thought we’ll go hard in the batting powerplay, find those boundaries at the start of the innings.”
“We were desperate, 10/10 from an effort perspective, the way we put up the effort in the ground, the faces told the story. We’ve got an unbelievable fanbase, we want to make them happy, we want them to have a smile on their face. We’ll have to continue putting in our efforts and try to change things around.”
