BENGALURU: Ahead of the all-important clash with Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024, star India batter and Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s (RCB) opener Virat Kohli revealed the reason behind his high strike rate in the ongoing season of the cash-rich league.
The Impact Player Rule allows a franchise to introduce a 12th player to the team from a five-player list which is given at the time of a toss. A team can bring in an impact player for the playing XI by replacing any player from the five-player list.
“I am telling you, with one extra batter, there is a reason I am playing with 200-plus strike rate in the powerplays. I know there is a batsman waiting at No. 8 as well. I think it has disrupted the balance and a lot of people are feeling this way not just me”, Kohli said.
Earlier, Rohit Sharma also shared his views and said that due to the Impact Player Rule, players like Shivam Dube and Washington Sundar are not getting a chance to bowl, which is not a good thing for Team India.
“I genuinely feel it is going to hold back the development of all-rounders because eventually cricket is played by 11 players, not 12. So I am not a big fan of the Impact Player Rule because you are taking so much from the game just to make it a little more entertaining for the people around you. But just in the cricketing aspect of it, I feel guys like Washington Sundar, and Shivam Dube are not getting to bowl, which is not a good thing for us (India). I am not sure what you can do about it, but I am not a fan of it,” said Rohit in the Club Prairie Fire podcast.
The 37-year-old player further stated that most of the teams don’t need an extra batter as their batters are doing great upfront.
“It is entertaining though, as there are 12 players to select from and whoever that Impact player is, can see how the game is going and change it based on what you need, and how the pitch is behaving. If you bat well and don’t lose too many wickets, you can add a bowler, which gives you the option of having 6-7 bowlers. You don’t need that extra batter because a lot of the teams upfront are batting well and you hardly see No. 7 or 8 coming to bat,” the right-hand batter added.
In IPL 2024, Kohli leads the race of players with the most runs and is a strong contender for the Orange Cap, scoring 661 runs at a strike rate of 155.16 after taking part in 13 matches.
RCB will host CSK in the 68th fixture of IPL 2024 encounter at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium on Saturday.
RCB is coming into the match with five wins on the trot after losing seven of the first eight matches this season but have a great chance to make the IPL playoffs for the ninth time.On the other hand, defending champions CSK have been more consistent throughout the season and are better placed to make their 13th playoff appearance. The five-time champions beat RCB in the season’s first clash by six wickets.
Chennai Super Kings are fourth on the points table with 14 points from 13 matches while Royal Challengers Bengaluru are at sixth with 12 points from as many games. CSK also have a better net run rate of 0.528 than RCB’s 0.387.
To replace the Super Kings in the top four, RCB needs to win the match by at least 18 runs if they score a minimum of 200 runs batting first or win in 18.1 overs if they are chasing 200.
Chennai Super Kings, meanwhile, will qualify for the IPL 2024 playoffs if they win the match, regardless of the margin of victory.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru squad: Faf du Plessis (c), Virat Kohli, Rajat Patidar, Glenn Maxwell, Cameron Green, Mahipal Lomror, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Karn Sharma, Mohammed Siraj, Lockie Ferguson, Yash Dayal, Swapnil Singh, Anuj Rawat, Suyash Prabhudessai, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Himanshu Sharma, Mayank Dagar, Manoj Bhandage, Tom Curran, Alzarri Joseph, Akash Deep, Saurav Chauhan, Rajan Kumar. (ANI)
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