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Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) skipper Virat Kohli had a dreadful outing against Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020, on Thursday.
On two occasions, Kohli dropped catches of KL Rahul, who went on to score a magnificent century. Kohli first dropped Rahul’s catch in the 17th over at deep square-leg and then in the 18th over.
The two chances proved to be costly as the wicket-keeper batsman scored an unbeaten 132, guiding his team to post 206/3 on the scoreboard.
Even with the bat, Kohli had the worst day as Sheldon Cottrell dismissed him for just 1 run. RCB eventually lost the match by a significant margin of 97 runs.
As if the trouble wasn’t enough, Kohli has also been fined for maintaining a slow over-rate in the game.
After winning the toss, Kohli elected to field first at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium. The first innings lasted an hour and 51 minutes. It was RCB’s first offence of the current season under the IPL’s Code of Conduct relating to minimum over-rate offence. As a result, Kohli was fined INR 12 lakh.
“Virat Kohli has been fined after his team maintained a slow over-rate during their Dream11 Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 match against Punjab in Dubai on 24 September 2020. As it was his team’s first offence of the season under the IPL’s Code of Conduct relating to minimum over-rate offences, Mr Kohli was fined Rs 12 lakh,” read IPL’s official release as quoted by Republic World.
Not the best day in the office: Kohli
The RCB captain reacted at the post-match presentation, stating that he is ready to take the brunt front on.
“I think we were good in the middle phase with the ball, they got off to a decent start, and we pulled things back nicely. I have to stand in front and take the brunt of it, not the best day in the office,” said Kohli.
The 31-year-old talked about the chances that he dropped and how it impacted the game eventually.
“Couple of important chances of KL when he was set, and that cost us 35-40 runs at a later stage. Maybe if we restricted them to 180, we wouldn’t have been under pressure from ball one of the chase. We know exactly where we went wrong, and I have to put my hand up and say a couple of important chances went down,” he added.
Kohli termed the Wednesday game as an off day, saying that it was a bad game and they have to move on.
“There are days when these kinds of things happen on the cricket field, they happen, and we have to accept them. We have had a good game, we have had a bad game, and now it is time to move on. Learn from the mistakes we make,” Kohli added further.
