'It Exposed Their Batting' - Tom Moody On RCB's Campaign


image-li4ti7gqRajat Patidar scored a riveting century vs LSG in IPL 2022 (iplt20.com)

Former Australian all-rounder Tom Moody said that the pre-season injury to Rajat Patidar hamstrung the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) to the hilt.

Patidar was one of the finds of the 2022 season as he smashed 333 runs @ 55.5o, including a match-winning hundred against the Lucknow SuperGiants in the Eliminator.

He was expected to play a huge role at the No.3 spot this season, but his campaign was cut short after he picked up an Achilles heel injury at the start of the season.

This meant that the onus of carrying the batting unit fell squarely on the shoulders of the trio of Faf du Plessis, Virat Kohli, and Glenn Maxwell.

While Kohli and Du Plessis went on to smash more than 1300 runs between, Maxwell too chipped with valuable knocks at different stages.

But, the lack of performance from a local batsman, including wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik meant that the trio's carry job proved to be inadequate.


Here's what Tom Moody said:

"RCB was challenged right from the beginning of the tournament when Patidar was made unavailable, the key figure at number three. It exposed their batting and put an enormous amount of pressure on their big three. The absence of Patidar did put a huge amount of pressure on Kohli, Maxwell and Faf, but they absorbed that pressure and played particularly well," said Moody to ESPNcricinfo.

"You can't just rely on a handful of individuals to win a tournament. It is teams that win tournaments. You get individuals that will win games, it is a classic sort of cliche. That is a perfect example of where RCB are at. They had a few individuals that could step up and blow a game away. But they had too many missing parts."

RCB eventually finished at the 6th spot after they lost their last league match to the Gujarat Titans, thanks to an unbeaten ton from Shubman Gill.