IPL 2020, RCB vs KXIP: ‘Not the best day in office,’ Virat Kohli reacts after dropping KL Rahul twice

IPL 2020: He dropped his Kings XI Punjab counterpart KL Rahul twice – once in the 17th over at deep square-leg when he was batting on 83 and then again in the 18th over when he was on 89. The two drops proved to be costly as Rahul smashed an unbeaten 132 enabling KXIP to post 206 for 3 batting first.

Royal Challengers Bangalore skipper Virat Kohli had a forgettable night against Kings XI Punjab in the IPL 2020 match no.6 on Thursday in Dubai. He dropped his Kings XI Punjab counterpart KL Rahul twice – once in the 17th over at deep square-leg when he was batting on 83 and then again in the 18th over when he was on 89. The two drops proved to be costly as Rahul smashed an unbeaten 132 enabling KXIP to post 206 for 3 batting first.

When Kohli came out to bat he was dismissed for 1 by Sheldon Cottrell. RCB were bowled out for 109 in 17 overs as KXIP won the match by a whopping 97 runs to get off the mark in this year’s IPL.

While Kohli’s drop-catches, in the end, did not directly cost RCB the match but it did enough to dent their confidence towards the end of the innings.

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Reacting to his lapses in the field, Kohli said he is ready to take the brunt front on.

“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.

Rahul’s masterful innings of 132 off 69 balls was laced with 14 boundaries and seven sixes. With his spectacular knock, he surpassed Rishabh Pant to post the highest individual score by an Indian in IPL history. Playing his 60th innings, Rahul also became the fastest Indian to reach the 2000 IPL runs. The stylish batsman clipped away a full-length delivery to fine leg for four to break Sachin Tendulkar’s record, who reached the milestone in 63 matches.

“Yeah it didn’t (go well). I think we were good in the middle phase with the ball, they got off to a decent start and we pulled things back nicely,” Kohli said.

“There are days when these kind of things happen on the cricket field, they happen and we have to accept them. We have had a good game, we have had a bad game and now it is time to move on. Learn from the mistakes we make. We did pretty well closing in on the second time out. Those are the moments, we pulled things back nicely so we understand how to do that as a team. 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.