He’s someone who has always wanted to push the limits: Sanjay Bangar on Virat Kohli’s mentality ahead of the RCB vs KKR match

The Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) gear up to host the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in a contest that promises to be a belter on Wednesday evening at the Chinnaswamy Stadium, in Bengaluru. 

With tight finishes and exciting matches a hallmark of this season, RCB fans will hope to see the home side exact revenge for the loss against KKR at Kolkata, and with the hosts coming into this contest on the back of consecutive wins from their last two games, there’s a lot to be optimistic about. 

All eyes during today’s clash will be on how the home team’s batsmen take on the KKR spin challenge, with the likes of Sunil Narine, Varun Chakravarthy and young Suyash Sharma running through RCB’s batting unit. 

One man who will be keen to make amends for his first-ball duck against RR will be Virat Kohli, who will want to put on a spectacle ahead of a long away stretch for RCB. Speaking on Game Day, RCB head coach Sanjay Bangar shed some light on how Kohli’s training regime makes him one of the best in the business.

Bangar said, “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.” 

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, much to the criticism of fans and pundits alike. 

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. He said - “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.”

He added, “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.”

RCB will host KKR for their penultimate home game before a long tour which will see them play five away games. The men in Red & Gold will return to the Chinnaswamy to play the Gujarat Giants in their final IPL 2023 group stage encounter on May 21st, 2023.