Moeen Ali Says RCB Can't Just Rely On Virat Kohli And AB de Villiers To Win The Title

Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) are one of the very few teams who haven’t won the title ever since the inception of the Indian Premier League. They have made it to the final on three occasions and they ended up losing all of them. They lost to Deccan Chargers in 2009, Chennai Super Kings in 2011 and Sunrisers Hyderabad in 2016. Their performance was short of being impressive in the previous edition, to say the least.

Having played 14 games, they have tasted bitter defeats (8) than the number of wins (5) and due to which they finished at the bottom of the IPL 2019 points table. Big guns like Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers gave absolutely everything to end the 12-year trophy drought but lack of consistency and collective rhythm put them on the back foot.

RCB needs to have a good start in order to win the title: Moeen Ali

England all-rounder Moeen Ali, one of the two foreign players retained for the next edition, believes that RCB needs to kick-start the IPL 2020 properly in order to make it to the playoffs and the get hold of the title. Ali is of the opinion that the team cannot expect Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers to win games for them and so others need to deliver the much-needed amends.

He also expects the batsmen to take full advantage of the conditions in Bengaluru so that they can pose a threat to the bowlers. “We cannot keep relying on Virat and AB de Villiers to win us games. Batters like myself and whomsoever is coming in, have to step up and bat well. We need a good start. I think we always start slowly.

We need to be brave, especially at home because the wicket in Bengaluru is very good. The boundaries are small over there and it’s very daunting for the bowlers,” Moeen told news agency IANS on the sidelines of the ongoing Abu Dhabi T10 league.

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Royal Challengers Bangalore Squad:

Virat Kohli, Moeen Ali, Yuzvendra Chahal, AB de Villiers, Parthiv Patel, Mohammed Siraj, Pawan Negi, Umesh Yadav, Gurkeerat Mann, Devdutt Padikkal, Shivam Dube, Washington Sundar, Navdeep Saini.

Players released:

Marcus Stoinis, Shimron Hetymer, Akshdeep Nath, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Colin de Grandhomme, Prayas Barman, Tim Southee, Kulwant Khejroliya, Himmat Singh, Heinrich Klaasen, Milind Kumar and Dale Steyn.