RCB pacer Chris Jordan along with bowling coach Allan Donald at a training session on Friday. (Photos: Shashidhar B.)
It’s been a league of twists and turns and some of the top-heavy teams have taken a beating in uncharacteristic fashion. The Royal Challengers Bangalore haven’t ignited their fans, their regular big guns haven’t boomed and it’s been left to their captain Virat Kohli and the standout K.L. Rahul to fan their hopes of a playoff berth, which however is threatening to get dicier by the day.
Going up against Gujarat Lions, who took off like a battering ram winning their first few matches, in an afternoon game on Saturday, the Challengers are in a situation where the remaining four games are a matter of life and death. Metaphorically, of course; it’s all a game at the end of it.
Having said that Kohli, who wears his heart on his sleeve on the field, no matter which game, knows that his team have been dealt a good deck with Lions’ captain Suresh Raina missing the game — astonishingly his first in IPL’s nine-year history owing to the imminent birth of his first child — and will be keen to turn the advantage at home.
The Challengers haven’t done badly, it’s just that they haven’t been able to stand up for the count at the crucial moments with their bowlers unable to rise to the situation. IPL’s heavyweight Chris Gayle hasn’t looked anything of his giant stature on the field and has had the mortification of being dropped even and it remains to be seen if the Jamaican, a proud father of a baby girl, can wave his wand at the business end of the league.
In what’s proving to be a season of new arrivals — with Raina away in the Netherlands — Brendon McCullum will take over the reins for the Gujarat Lions, who just bucked their losing trend at Kolkata to stay in the top-two. In contrast, the Challengers, by going down to Mumbai Indians and doing them a big favour in turn, lost the momentum that they seemed to be building, riding on the shoulders of Kohli and Rahul.
But the league is such that even the current top two cannot rest easy and these last few games where teams go for broke in search of the playoffs berth puts added pressure on them.
The Lions mauled them when the teams last met and the Challengers, hurting from that loss and hurting in general with just four wins from 10 games, can still push their way through if they win the remaining four. But it has to start from Saturday.
