Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) pacer Reece Topley urged his team’s batters to support the leading run-scorer Virat Kohli as Faf du Plessis’ side is currently on a three-match losing streak.
RCB, who have never won an IPL title, have lost four matches in the ongoing edition and currently sit ninth on the points table and, if they don’t recover before time, another first-round exit is on the cards.
Their batting, despite having many T20 specialists, has been disappointing as apart from Kohli, their skipper Faf du Plessis is the only player to have scored more than 100 runs in IPL so far, proving the state of their batting lineup.
Kohli is the tournament’s top-scorer with 316 runs in five innings as he has notched up two fifties and a century so far but he has little to no support from the other hand as players like Glenn Maxwell and Cameroon Green have failed to leave their mark in the tournament so far.
"You can take away the fact that it is the overseas batters (only) and you can probably say, Virat has had quite a load in the run-scoring department,” Topley said in the pre-match press conference on Wednesday.
“I do not think anyone needs to be an expert to sort of look at everyone's performances and say they haven't been up to scratch and that's all aspects of the game, and obviously now we've had five games.
"The exciting part is that it's still relatively young into the tournament. There's a lot still to play for and what is exciting is that there's a lot of time to turn that around and still showcase how good we are."
“At the start of the season (the goal) is to qualify for the finals. To there's still an opportunity to do that, we're working hard to make that achievable,” said Topley.
- Virat Kohli