The former cricketer and the skipper of the Kings XI Punjab, Gautam Gambhir has slammed Virat Kohli who is the captain for the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) for years. Despite his aggressive captaincy, RCB have never managed to win a single IPL trophy. Although they have reached the playoffs and finals, never challenged the trophy.
In the second game of the red army, they faced KL Rahul’s Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) and failed miserably. Gautam feels that Kohli’s captaincy is a flaw and needs to be polished. He has given a few opinions and discussed that if he was the skipper, he would have chosen the best bowler for the dead overs.
“I know Shivam Dube bowled really well in his first two overs. Yes, you would be tempted to give him a third over, but not the last over. When KL Rahul is already set and batting on 100+, you are walking on the edge, because that can happen… I would have Navdeep Saini or Dale Steyn bowling the last over, even though Steyn is not the best death bowler. But I would have given the last over to the best bowler of the team,” Gambhir said.
RCB vs KXIP: Gautam Gambhir bashes out Virat Kohli for his captaincy
“You (Virat Kohli) finished off Navdeep Saini in the 17th over. Probably, you could have used Umesh Yadav, who did not have the best of the days. But Shivam Dube bowling the last over was a bad calculation,” added Gautam Gambhir.
When KL was on the crease going with a might score crossing a hundred, Gautam feels the skipper shall not have been walking on the edges, and picking him up earlier could have been a helpful hand to RCB. The run chase would have been different grabbing KXIP’s skipper earlier.
“Had KL Rahul got out for 86-89, Kings XI would have scored 185, and chasing that would have been a completely different gameplan for RCB. That is how it happened, that is what T20 cricket is. Small mistakes can make a huge difference as well. It was a huge impact, especially from the results point of view,” Gambhir signed off.
