Bangalore burdened by pressure — Kohli
Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) needed to rediscover the joy of cricket to end their Indian Premier League (IPL) title drought, captain Virat Kohli said.
Star-studded Bangalore have reached three finals of the Twenty20 league but are one of three franchises — with Delhi and Punjab — not to have won the title.
“You go after something so badly, and it keeps running away from you,” Kohli told former England batsman and ex-RCB teammate Kevin Pietersen in an Instagram chat.
“It has just added pressure in recent years. We’ve just thought: ‘this is the season, this is the season’, and that’s blown us all over the place.
“I think we need to get that joy back,” Kohli said.
The India captain acknowledged that expectations were bound to be high from a team featuring some of the most destructive Twenty20 batsmen.
“When you have some of the biggest names to play for RCB, obviously there’s going to be more attention on the team.
“Even with this team — myself, AB [de Villiers] and [Chris] Gayle has played recently for us as well — we’re always going to be more in focus. We’ve spoken about it,” Kohli said.
“We’ve reached three finals … but those things are irrelevant till the time you win that title.
“Even when we’ve had the best team, we’ve just not been able to do it,” he said.
Their bid for a maiden IPL title will have to wait though, as the start of the 2020 tournament has been put back to April 15 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with another postponement seemingly inevitable.