Cricket: Cricket-Bengaluru’s Karthik shrugs off Chennai defeat, backs batsmen to fire

BENGALURU (Reuters) – Royal Challengers Bengaluru began their Indian Premier League (IPL) campaign with a defeat by champions Chennai Super Kings after a top-order collapse, but Dinesh Karthik believes it is only a matter of time before his fellow batsmen deliver.

Bengaluru boasts two of the world’s most consistent players in Virat Kohli and Faf du Plessis, but the opening pair failed to build on their good starts in Friday’s game after making 21 and 35 while the explosive Glenn Maxwell fell for a first-ball duck.

Rajat Patidar was also dismissed for zero and Cameron Green managed only 18, becoming Chennai paceman Mustafizur Rahman’s fourth wicket of the evening.

“When you have a long batting lineup, ideally what you want to be doing is putting pressure throughout. That’s what we tried to do, play shots,” Karthik told reporters about the team’s aggressive approach early on.

Bengaluru staged a valiant comeback thanks to Anuj Rawat’s 25-ball 48 and Karthik’s 26-ball 38 in a 95-run stand lower down to guide the team to 173-6 in 20 overs, but hosts Chennai chased down the total with six wickets and eight balls left.

“Sometimes it becomes important for the backend players to soak up the pressure, try and see what’s required at that stage. That’s what Anuj and I did,” Karthik added.

“Having said that, I’m sure most of these batters are high pedigree, they’re playing international cricket and playing so well that they’re dominating international cricket,” he added. “If they keep their form continuing and not lose wickets like we lost today (Friday) then we can see some big scores.”

Chennai bowling consultant Eric Simons heaped praise on Bangladesh’s Mustafizur, who claimed 4-29 in four overs.

“It was always about the conditions and the balance of the side that we would like a left-armer, something we have worked with for a while, somebody that brings something different,” Simons said. “We just felt that he does suit the conditions, but it’s the simplicity of the plan we put in place. It has always been the hallmark of the way we go about our stuff. He executed beautifully.”

(Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in Bengaluru. Editing by Gerry Doyle)