Venkatesh Prasad admits that Royal Challengers Bangalore struggled with the team-combination – Cricket News Update
Venkatesh Prasad, the bowling coach of Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), has come out in defence of his bowlers by saying that the team struggled in the initial part of the tournament to find the right combination and that’s why they leaked so many runs.
RCB is considered to be one of the hot-favourites of the on-going tournament because of a powerful batting line-up which includes Chris Gayle, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers etc and some experienced bowlers like Daniel Vettori, Zaheer Khan and Muttiah Muralitharan.
However, RCB failed to deliver the goods in the early part of the tournament because of some poor bowling and their bowlers failed to restrict the opposing batsmen on most occasions. Apart from Vettori, Zaheer and Murali, none of the RCB bowlers were able to make an impression in the event before their last match against Rajasthan Royals last night. Left-arm orthodox spinner, KP Appanna rose to the occasion in the last match and picked up four crucial scalps to win the match for his team.
Prasad defended the performances of his bowlers in the earlier part of the tournament by saying that the team management had to play some batsmen who could bowl and that weakened the bowling attack of RCB. Otherwise, the bowling coach is very happy with the performance of the regular bowlers.
“I would take it as a problem of combination as to find out who are the all-rounders who can bowl those four or eight overs other than our three main bowlers,” said Prasad.
The former Sri Lankan off-spinner, Muralitharan, is not able to break into the playing XI since the last couple of matches because of the limitation on the foreign players. However, Prasad understands that a team has to sacrifice sometimes in order to get the right combination in the shortest format of the game
Former Test cricketer added, “A team needs back up in T20, whether it is the fifth bowler or the sixth or seventh batsman. It’s not that our bowlers are not capable. We defended a score of 157 against Delhi Daredevils. Murali bowled brilliantly as did Vinay. But then when we are not playing Murali because of the foreign players limitation we have more overs to fill in.”
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