Former Australian captain Ricky Ponting on Tuesday pointed out the slump in Virat Kohli, Ab de Villiers and Chris Gayle’s form as among the key reasons that Royal Challengers Bangalore had done so badly in the tenth edition of the ongoing Indian Premier League.

“Their big name players just aren’t standing up like they did last year,” Ponting said to cricket.com.au. “They got on an amazing roll at the back end of last year’s tournament when Kohli was playing out of his skin, de Villiers was playing well, Gayle was chipping in and Watson was doing a good job with bat and ball.”

“But so far Kohli has done next to nothing, there’s been flashes in the pan from Gayle and AB de Villiers, but the consistency just hasn’t been there,” added Ponting. “Watson’s the other one who hasn’t had that consistency and match-winning performances this season that he’s had in previous seasons. And he’s been in and out of the side and up and down the batting order to a degree. They’ve got some issues there.”

The former Australian captain argued that the problem with RCB was their reliance on a few players: “Quite often those few have been quite consistent and been good enough to win quite a lot of games for them. But this season it just hasn’t panned out that way.”

However, the 42-year-old also argued that KL Rahul’s injury had come as a big blow to Bangalore.

“He had a terrific back-end to last season. He did some amazing things last year so him not being at the top has been a big loss,” said Ponting. “He and Virat were a pretty formidable opening pair last year. You couldn’t argue with what they did last year and they’ve played a bit of cricket with each other in the Indian Test team for the few months leading in to the IPL.

He added, “So they would have had a good dynamic there at the top of the order and unfortunately that’s been missing for them. But you have to have replacements for just about every position so that’s where they’ve come undone.”

Rahul injured his shoulder during the India-Australia series and missed the IPL and will miss the Champions Trophy as well. RCB have had a wretched season and currently in last season with only two wins in 13 matches. Virat Kohli has apologised to the fans and promised to come back stronger next season.