‘Virat Is someone Who Always Wanted To Push Barriers For Himself’, Says Sanjay Bangar

Bengaluru:  Ahead of Royal Challengers Bangalore’s (RCB) home match against the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) on Wednesday, the team’s head coach, Sanjay Bangar shed some light on Virat Kohli’s training regime that makes him one of the best in the business.

Kohli will be keen to make amends for his golden duck in RCB’s win over Rajasthan Royals at the Chinnaswamy Stadium. He was trapped lbw by an inswinging delivery from Trent Boult.

The ace batter has been in fine form in the ongoing IPL 2023, scoring 279 runs, including four fifties, in seven matches at a strike rate of 141.62 at the halfway stage of the tournament.

“Whenever he comes for whatever training, he makes sure that he does his things very well and if at all there are any issues which he is concerned about, he wants to straightaway address it and rectify it. So that’s the hallmark of his game and he’s somebody who’s always wanted to push the limit and barrier for himself. So, it augurs well that he’s in that sort of a mindset,” Bangar said on RCB Game Day Preview.

While RCB’s trio of Kohli, Faf du Plessis, and Glenn Maxwell have been consistently among the runs, the middle order has failed to come to the party as they struggled to contribute consistently so far.

Addressing the middle order’s relative no-show, Bangar commented on how the top order’s fluency means the batsmen who come in later don’t have much to do.

“It’s a T20 game first of all, we’ve to understand that if three of the top four batsmen a getting to play a lot of the balls, then it leaves very little work to be done. But yes, we would certainly like to have a little more contribution from them but it doesn’t mean that they are not contributing.

“One thing we have to keep track of is that all the day games, the wickets have slowed down drastically, teams have softened the ball so even for the batsmen coming lower down the order, the run-making might not be as easy. You’ve been seeing that not only from our batting unit but also the opposition we have played so it’s about how the bowlers come into play in the back end of the innings that’s critical,” the head coach said.

RCB will host KKR for their penultimate home game before a long tour which will see them play five away games. They will return to the Chinnaswamy to play the Gujarat Giants in their last IPL 2023 group stage encounter on May 21.