New face, Harpreet Brar sinks RCB

IPL needed some upsets!

IPL 2021 needed some bottom-placed teams to win against the top-ranked teams!

The tournament was dragging a bit and it was high time that we needed some upsets and some close contests. And finally, we got one yesterday when Punjab Kings defeated Royal Challengers Bangalore in Ahmedabad. Punjab Kings have been struggling with balance for most of the tournament and they have been doing too many experimentations with their batting order. For a team to do well one must have a settled side and Punjab Kings have not been one thus far in 2021. Yesterday they were further hampered with the injury to Mayank Agarwal. They made a couple of other changes too with one of those changes, Harpreet Brar making a major impact on the match.

So what were the hits and misses from yesterday’s match?

Let’s have a look.

The Hits:

KL Rahul takes time to get going. It’s a risky strategy if from the other end no one is enforcing the innings. Yesterday Chris Gayle took it upon him to play the aggressive role as Rahul settled in to play the long haul. It worked out well yesterday with Rahul getting into aggressive mode towards the end of the innings. He remained not out on 91 runs off 57 balls to take Punjab Kings to 180 runs which at the end turned out to be a winning total.

The number 7 spot has been a cause of concern for the Punjab Kings throughout the tournament. They tried a lot of players over the last two weeks and yesterday they brought in a relatively unknown domestic player, Harpreet Brar in that spot. With the team stuttering at 118/5 with 5 overs left, Punjab Kings were on the verge of letting go of the good start that Chris Gayle gave them. A couple of lusty hits by Harpreet got the team breathing again and it gave confidence to Rahul too to start playing some shots. The aggressive batting by Harpreet gave him the necessary confidence when he came into bowl. RCB didn’t run away with the chase but wickets were hard to come by. Then in the space of 2 overs, Harpreet changed the complexion of the match completely by picking up the wickets of Virat Kohli, Glenn Maxwell, and AB DeVilliers. RCB couldn’t recover from that jolt and lost the match by a big margin. 

I was very surprised when Ravi Bishnoi was kept on the bench for the first few matches by Punjab Kings. Thank God that good sense prevailed and he got his spot back in the playing XI. He has given impactful performance in all the three matches he played and yesterday was no different. 2/17 in 4 overs is ample proof of the same. What’s more, he came up with another superlative catch in the outfield when he helped dismiss Harshal Patel in the final over.

The misses:

Harshal Patel is leading the wicket-takers list in this year’s IPL and has been amongst the wickets in all the matches thus far. Even in the match against CSK when he went for 37 runs in his final over, he had bowled extremely well in the first three overs. But yesterday he had a terrible day with the ball. Such days happen and I guess it’s good for him that it happened in the middle of the tournament because he can always come back well in the next match. He couldn’t get the ball in the right place and was taken for plenty in the slog overs. The yorkers either converted into full toss or half volleys and both Rahul and Harpreet took a heavy toll on him. Harshal redeemed somewhat with the bat though hitting 31 runs off 13 balls to let everyone know that he has good skills with the bat too. He had the worst economy rate with the ball and the best strike rate with the bat. Talk of polar opposite performance and it was similar to what Pat Cummins displayed against CSK.

Maxwell failed with the bat. That’s two days in a row. This is not yet in the danger zone but his past performance in IPL will keep the RCB fans on tenterhooks. The bigger problem is Virat Kohli. He is opening the batting so that he can play aggressively at the top but that’s not happening and his fragility against spinners is getting very disconcerting too. Time is not far off when teams will start bringing in spinners against him as soon as he comes into bat. For a player of his caliber, it’s quite surprising that he is unable to plug this gap in his play. I sincerely hope that we get to see a century from Virat’s bat before the IPL ends.

What to look forward to?

I think Chris Gayle should open the batting. Even if Mayank comes back it should be he and Gayle who should open for Punjab kings. Rahul should bat at number 4 to hold the innings together. Pooran is in terrible form and I think it would be good for the team to replace him with Dawid Malan. I hope that the win against RCB works like a tonic for Punjab Kings and they rattle off some wins to open up the tournament.

For RCB there is not much to change because they have a settled unit in place. They just need to hope that Harshal Patel is well-spoken to because it’s now twice in three matches wherein he has gone for plenty of runs in the final over. They might think of changing their death ball strategy going forward!

So what do you think? Will this loss make RCB jittery? Will Punjab Kings be able to win some matches on a trot? Please do write in as we look forward to the match between Mumbai Indians and Chennai Superkings later in the evening.

PS. Keeping cool under pressure is what separates a great leader and an average one. Staying positive under any adversity is one of the biggest traits of good leadership!

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