Former Indian opener Wasim Jaffer feels the death overs batting led to Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s downfall against Rajasthan Royals despite Virat Kohli completing his milestone of scoring a century. RCB could only take four runs in the penultimate over with Kohli completing his hundred.
Jaffer reckons the personal milestones should take a backseat as the team should be looking to finish on a high. Kohli got to his eighth IPL century off 67 balls, which is the joint slowest in the IPL history along with Manish Pandey.
RCB posted 183 runs on the board but Kohli could not get the support from the other end after Faf du Plessis was dismissed after scoring 44 off 33 balls. Kohli went on to score an unbeaten knock of 113 off 72 balls but his efforts went in vain.
On the contrary, Romario Shepherd smashed 32 runs in the final over against Delhi Capitals’ Anirch Nortje and it proved to be the difference as MI registered their first win of the season by 29 runs.
“In the RCB game, those 19th and 20th overs have hurt them, even though Virat Kohli got that milestone. Overs of 15 and 20, closer to that, it was the difference in the MI-DC game, that over from Romario Shepherd completely changed the game. If they hadn’t had that over, the game would have gone close. So there is no such place for milestones. If you can get it, good enough, but you still have to go hard,” Jaffer said on ESPC Cricinfo.
Jaffer added that the message to not chase milestones has to be passed on to the players as the team’s result should be the priority.
“That’s the need of the hour. That message (not chasing milestones) has to be passed on to the players. Whether you like it or not, if you need to win games, win tournaments, that is the approach you need to take, otherwise you will end up costing the game,” Jaffer said.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru will next take on Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai on Thursday.
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