After enduring a disappointing start to their Indian Premier League campaign, the Royal Challengers Bangalore management admitted that they were surprised by the much-criticised pitch in their opener against Chennai Super Kings on Saturday.
Virat Kohli and Co were bundled out for 70 in 17.1 overs, with CSK chasing it down in 17.4 overs with seven wickets to spare. Harbhajan Singh was the pick of the bowlers for the defending champions with a spell of 3/20 which included the wickets of Kohli and AB de Villiers.
RCB assistant coach Vikram Solanki said the pitch was far from ideal for batting. “I don’t think we played well enough and CSK were by far the better side. We were surprised by spin and lack of pace and it spun far more than we thought. It was probably not an ideal pitch as it was not an even contest. You need an opportunity to score as well,” he said at the post-match conference.
Solanki, however, felt that his team could have done better if it had managed to get one good partnership.
“Perhaps 120-130 would have been enough, but batting first in the first game in the tournament we needed to be brave and say maybe should have looked to get to 100 and look at things. We needed just one partnership and if necessary could have even played ugly and dug in to stop the rut of constant wickets.”
Insisting that there were some positives which could be taken from the game, Solanki said, “It is not ideal. There are some positives though. [Yuzvendra] Chahal bowled a wonderful spell. Moeen [Ali] also bowled well and [youngster Navdeep] Saini bowled with pace. Far from an ideal performance but we have to move on,” he said.
Earlier, Kohli had said that the wicket looked much better than it played. “We though 140-150 would be an ideal score. A scrappy sort of start but either team would have struggled batting first,” he said after the match.
With inputs from PTI