On April 25, Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) and Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) faced each other again last time when they played Hyderabad scored Ipl’s highest total by breaking their record, they registered 287 runs onboard. But this time Bengaluru’s skipper Faf Du Plessis won the toss and elected to bat, Bengaluru was quite sure that they would win this match.
Virat Kohli and Rajat Patidar scored half-centuries and took the team’s total to 206 runs which was more than enough to defend. Hyderabad openers both lost their wicket and innings succumbed and fell short by 35 runs. Bengaluru finally won the match after 6 consecutive losses.
Aaron Finch backs Virat Kohli
Aussie skipper and former batter Aaron Finch backs Virat Kohli for giving chance to Rajat Patidar to play aggressively and score runs. If Rajat Patidar had not scored runs Bengaluru couldn’t have achieved that total. When Virat was batting he was scoring runs with a slow strike rate so he made Rajat Patidar come forward and smash boundaries in his cameo innings reliving Bengaluru’s dugout.
“One thing you have to keep in mind is that Patidar was going crazy at the other end. Sometimes your job as a set batter is to take the game a little bit deeper and get Patidar on strike as much as possible. That’s where the intent to hit boundaries goes out. You can look at him in isolation and say, ‘Yes, it dropped’. But as a partnership, it worked well. He (Kohli) did the right thing by getting Patidar up there,”
Sometimes when the other batter is in the form you give freedom to them to score boundaries and make sure that you stand still on the other side this is what Virat Kohli did when he was struggling to score big runs in that match.