IPL 2018: 4 Captains, 4 Mistakes

#4 Virat Kohli (RCB): Too much team shuffling

Another year and another heartbreaking season for the Indian captain

There is something peculiar about Virat Kohli and IPL. It's like some sort of jinx for the Indian captain. Each year he is denied a comfortable campaign due to some reason or the other.

Time and again, the story remains the same. RCB come in as one of the strongest sides on paper but fail to live up to the expectations. Or even half of it.

With the likes of Brendon McCullum, Quinto de Kock, AB de Villiers and Virat Kohli himself, RCB should have showered runs throughout the season but unfortunately, that isn't the case here.

Maybe Virat had put a lot of trust on his overseas batsmen. If you actually take a look, rare are the matches where McCullum, de Kock or de Villiers proved to be effective. Though each of them played individual knocks on an occasion or two, neither of these could match their captain's consistency.

Here comes the question: What if Virat had settled with a consistent set of players?

We saw VK shuffling a lot with his playing XI this season. Barring a few regular names, none cemented their place. We saw Chris Woakes, Washington Sundar, Kulwant Khejroliya, Pawan Negi, McCullum, Sarfaraz Khan, Moeen Ali, de Grandhomme, Parthiv Patel, Manan Vohra, Mohammed Siraj, Murugan Ashwin in and out of the squad. Oof! That is indeed a long list of players.

Talking further, Kohli's decision regarding the inclusion of Parthiv Patel so late in the tournament can be called into question too. Parthiv marked his debut in style after scoring a fifty against CSK and ended up as the lone warrior for his side. Maybe a consistent place in the team would have proved useful and Parthiv Patel might have done better than his counterpart, Quinton de Kock.

Another notable player from the RCB side is Mandeep Singh. But, he often got shadowed under big names. Looking at the stats so far, Mandeep has performed really well in the middle order with considerably good strike rate. Had Kohli promoted him up the batting order to the opening slot, Mandeep might have done better than the others. Such has been this batsman's form lately.

Nevertheless, all such miscalculations have proved fatal for RCB as yet again they lie at the bottom half of the table.