Royal Challengers Bangalore skipper Virat Kohli blamed his side’s sloppy fielding for their six-wicket loss against Kolkata Knight Riders at the Chinnaswamy Stadium on Sunday.

Bangalore slumped to their fifth defeat in seven games after failing to defend 176. This means that Kohli and Co need to win six out of their last seven games to stay in the hunt for a place in the playoffs.

“If we look back, we didn’t deserve to win. I don’t think we’re trying hard enough, we need to be hard on ourselves. We don’t deserve to win if we field like that. We can’t afford to field like that and let singles go to boundaries. We were just not good enough tonight.”

What makes Bangalore’s task even more daunting is that four of their forthcoming games are away from home. Kohli said they need to consider every match as a virtual knockout game. “I can’t pin point anything right now, we need to win six out of seven to qualify from here. We need to be in that mindset to take every match as as virtual semi-final from now,” he said.

“There’s no room for lapses, complacency or hesitation. We need our guys stepping up and hopefully the guys can put up a better show.”

Kohli’s teammate Brendon McCullum said it was a big blow for Royal Challengers Bangalore to miss the services of AB de Villiers in the crucial match against Kolkata Knight Riders yesterday.

“We definitely missed AB de Villiers. He is probably the best player in the world and one of the best we have seen in the history of the game, so for him to be absent was a huge blow for us. He is a tough customer as well, so obviously he is pretty ill to not take the field today,” he told reporters in the post-match press conference.

McCullum hoped that De Villiers returns in the next match against Mumbai Indians after recovering from a viral infection. “He is desperate to get out there, so hopefully he will be back in the next game. He is such a key player for us, and such a good leader. A good man to have around,” he added.

Asked whether Kolkata were happy not to find De Villiers in the playing list, man-of-the-match Chris Lynn said: “Yeah, it is obviously a couple of smiles on the bowler’s faces.

“We know AB, in the form he is, is always a dangerous batsman but we could not take the foot off the throat because Baz (Brendon McCullum) is such a good striker of the ball. [We had] a little half-smile but we knew we still had a job at hand,” Lynn said.