RCB's openers need to up their ante to keep IPL victory hopes alive

Unlike many teams with explosive openers who can maximise the fielding restriction in the six-over Powerplay, RCB's top-order is old-fashioned

As compared to the star-dependent previous iterations, the Royal Challengers Bangalore look a much more balanced unit now despite some of the key players being on the wrong side of 30. They finally appear to be not relying heavily on their superstar players to deliver the goods with the team chipping in as a whole.

They have gotten off to a decent start, three wins and two losses from their opening five games, and are responding well to new skipper Faf du Plessis. There is cohesion, camaraderie and confidence in the bunch.

However, there is an issue ailing the team, something that has affected them the last couple of seasons too, and they need to find a solution to it, failing which it could really impact their victory chances.

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The problem is the inability of the top-order to tee off from the word go.

Unlike many teams with explosive openers who can maximise the fielding restriction in the six-over Powerplay, the Royal Challengers’ top-order is old-fashioned. Du Plessis, his opening partner Anuj Rawat and one-drop Virat Kohli all like to take their time at the start of their respective innings before opening their shoulders later on.

Their safety first, risk later strategy is quite evident. Their highest score at the end of the Powerplay is 48/0 against Rajasthan Royals, the remaining reads 41/0, 36/3, 30/0 and 42/3. That’s an average of 6.56 runs per over which is too slow by modern day T20 standards. RCB have also maintained a sombre pace in the first 10 overs, scoring 70/1, 59/3, 68/4, 61/1 and 86/4 which translates to around 6.88 runs per over, showing only a minuscule improvement of 0.32 between overs 7-10.

In terms of individual strike rates, Du Plessis’ is 128.07, Rawat 113.63 and Kohli 132.09. Yes, not all can go bang-bang from the word go even in T20 cricket and it’s good to have an anchor to hold one end up while others attack, but having three anchor-type batters at the top ends up putting a lot of pressure on the middle or lower middle order.

The Royal Challengers’ middle order has done reasonably well so far with Dinesh Karthik turning the clock back with some spell-binding performances, rail-thin Shahbaz Ahmed stepping it up incredibly and SS Prabhudesai giving a good account of himself in his first match against Chennai Super Kings. But it would be extremely difficult for them also to double the run-rate game after game and Royal Challengers need to find a way to up the tempo at the start.

Either one or two of the trio start attacking from the get-go or they need to shuffle their batting order. Glenn Maxwell, so successful for RCB last season, can either be promoted to open or one-drop. Maxwell is an exceptional player of spin and pace, and has that daring mentality to destroy bowling attacks. If RCB wants the right-left opening combination, then there’s no harm in experimenting with Shahbaz at the top.

The sooner RCB find a solution to this problem, the better it’ll be for their fortunes.

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