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Royal Challengers Bangalore’s (RCB) stand-in captain Virat Kohli has become the first batter to score 3,000 or more runs at a single venue. Kohli beat Bangladesh’s Mushfiqur Rahim to complete 3,000 T20 runs at M.Chinnaswamy Stadium. He achieved the milestone en route half-century against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in the run chase.
The previous record belonged to Rahim who has scored 2,989 runs at Shere Bangla National Cricket Stadium, Dhaka. He is followed by teammate Mahmudullah who has 2,813 T20 runs at the same venue.
Opening the innings in the run chase of 201 against Nitish Rana-led side, Kohli got off to a flyer in the powerplay overs. He slowed down in the middle overs as Mahipal Lomror kept the required run rate in check. In the 11th over, Kohli reached his half-century from 33 balls. In the 13th over, Kohli went for a pull shot off the front foot but Venkatesh Iyer took a stunner at the boundary. He scored 54 runs from 37 balls including six fours.
Kohli has been captaining the RCB side as Faf du Plessis has not regained full fitness. Du Plessis has been used as impact player in the past few games.
“Evening game at Chinnaswamy, we've chased well here. It was unexpected but nothing I'm not used to (stand-in captaincy). It's been fun so far because of the way the team has been playing. Faf will be playing the impact role again. Hopefully he'll be back leading from the next game. Looks like a great pitch, the usual Chinnaswamy pitch that we expect,” Kohli said after winning the toss and opting to field first.
Despite Kohli's half-century, RCB lost the match by 21 runs as they suffered a batting collapse. Kohli blamed the dropped catches for their side's loss at home.
“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. 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,” Kohli told the broadcasters after the match.
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