IPL
IPL 2023: 'We deserved to lose,' says Virat Kohli after KKR overwhelm RCB
Bengaluru/IBNS/UNI: Royal Challenge Bangalore (RCB) were defeated for the second time by Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in the ongoing Indian Premier League after the men-in-purple registered a 21-run comprehensive victory over the hosts here on Wednesday.
Reflecting on the match, RCB's stand-in captain Virat Kohli said, "To be honest we handed them the game. We deserved to lose. We weren't professional enough. We handed them a victory. We were certainly not up to standard. If you look at the game, we didn't capitalise our chances. We dropped a few catches which cost us 25-30 runs."
"Even while chasing, despite losing wickets we were one partnership away from being in the game. We needed one partnership to get us home. We need to be switched on and not give away soft plays," Kohli said at the post-match interaction.
Match Highlights
KKR ended their four-match losing streak on the back of a good all-round performance led by Jason Roy's fifty and three-fer by Varun Chakravarthy at Chinnaswamy Stadium here on Wednesday.
Roy scored a sizzling 56 off 29 balls after hammering 4 boundaries and five maximums.
After KKR lost the plot in the middle despite a fiery start, captain Nitish Rana made RCB pay dearly for two drops. And then, Rinku Singh and David Wiese came in and took the team's total to 200 in a hurry.
Chasing 201, RCB came out all guns blazing scoring 30 runs off the first two overs, but leggie Suyash Sharma gave the breakthrough for the visitors in his very first over by removing inform batsman and Impact Player Faf du Plessis for 17 off 7 balls.
Sharma sent back Shahbaz Ahmed (2) plumb in front in his very next over and Chakaravarthy sent back Glenn Maxwell (5) in the final over of the powerplay.
For the first time in this season, RCB lost three wickets inside six overs and they lost two of their in-form batsmen in the process.
Mahipal Lomror (34 off 18) took the aggressor's role as he and Kohli (54 off 37, 6x4s) forged a half-ton partnership.
KKR fought back as they removed both the set batsmen within a span of five deliveries.
While Lomror fell to a short ball, a superb catch from Venkatesh Iyer ended Kohli's knock.
Post that, the visitors kept chipping in with wickets and never allowed RCB back into the game.
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