IPL 2023: Virat Kohli lost his cool on Wednesday following his side’s defeat at home to Kolkata Knight Riders. The hosts conceded the game by 23 runs despite being well in contention for most of the game. Kohli, the stand-in skipper, was far from pleased with the effort, admitting that his side handed a ‘freebie’ to the opposition. Follow IPL 2023 LIVE Updates on Insidesport.IN
Chasing 201 to win, barring Virat Kohli none of the RCB batters made a sizeable impact as the home team fell short in their run chase. RCB could only manage 179 in response choked by the spin duo of Varun Chakravarthy and Suyash Sharma.
The manner of defeat did not sit well with Kohli, who blasted his team in the post-match press conference. The 34-year-old said that his side deserved to lose and handed them a freebie to KKR at the Chinnaswamy on Wednesday.
He said, “To be honest we handed them the game. We did deserve to lose. We handed them a victory. We were certainly not up to standard. If you look at the game, we didn’t capitalize our chances. We dropped a few chances which cost us 25-30 runs. We set up ourselves really well. We ended up hitting the fielder to balls which weren’t wicket taking.”
Kohli added, “It is what’s on the scoreboard and how to get them. Even while chasing, despite losing wickets we were one partnership away from being in the game. We needed one partnership to get us home. We need to be switched on and not give away soft plays.
RCB have a run of away games before their return to the Chinnaswamy. Kohli and Co play five away games on the bounce before returning to Bengaluru for their final league stage game of the season.
“We have won one and lost one on the road. It is not something that is making us nervous. We need to win some away games to be in good shape for the later stages of the tournament,” he said.
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