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“No place like
home, no place like Bengaluru.” This was tweeted by Royal Challengers
Bengaluru prior to their opening IPL 2024 home matchup versus Punjab Kings.
During their
practice session at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium, Virat Kohli batted for almost
forty minutes. When Kohli is at his best, you can watch and listen to him bat
just as much. However, that day’s opening salvo wasn’t even close to his best.
He did not middle the ball most of the time. Using the bouncer, Alzarri Joseph
urged him along. He attempted to use the reverse sweep or fall to the ground
against the spinners, but was defeated. A few sixes that were tried fell well
within the boundary. This was a reflection of RCB’s history at their home field
in certain ways. The data indicates that they haven’t always felt completely at
home here.
They have 40
victories and an equal number of losses when playing in Bengaluru. This is in
stark contrast to the 46 wins and 19 defeats of the Chennai Super Kings at
Chepauk or the 49 wins and 29 losses of the Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede. It
might not be a coincidence that they did not play a single game at the
Chinnaswamy during their three seasons of playoff appearances, from 2020 to
2022.
Monday’s game vs Kings is the first of RCB’s three straight back-to-back home
games. Their season may very well depend on how well they play in these games.
They like to front
load their batting, sometimes at the price of their bowling, which is why this
has been a recurrent topic for them over the years. They continued to struggle
in the final overs, both with the bat and the ball, in the 2023 season. They scored
at the end of each of their seven home games at a rate of 10.60 per over and
let up 12.07 per over.
By acquiring Cameron Green from the Mumbai Indians for an astounding INR 17.5
crore (about US $2.1 million), RCB attempted to fix the middle-order problem.
Additionally, their batting is far more balanced this season with Patidar back.
However, RCB has
first-hand knowledge of the Chinnaswamy and knows that batting alone does not
win games there. Despite scoring 212 against the Lucknow Super Giants and 197
against the Gujarat Titans in the previous season, they were defeated.
How can they start to turn things around at home? It appears that they now have
more holes than plugs, but if they have figured something out, we may see it in
action on Monday against the Kings.