"Virat Kohli has always performed but..." - Mohammed Shami's blunt take on RCB's loss to RR

Senior India pacer Mohammed Shami, who rattled all batting units except Australia's during last year's ICC Cricket World Cup on home soil, slammed all the RCB batters for not being able to support Virat Kohli. Shami took note of the knock that Kohli played last night at the Sawai Mansingh stadium against Rajasthan Royals and claimed that other RCB batters should be stepping up to complement the batting stalwart. The 35-year-old acted as the lone wolf in the match which Bengaluru lost by 6 wickets. Their opponents - Rajasthan Royals have now extended their winning run to 4 matches and are on top of the points table.

But there weren't many positives for RCB except for Virat Kohli, who despite scoring a century, is being slammed for taking too long to reach triple figures. It took him 67 balls to score a century and with that, he became the joint-slowest century scorer in the history of IPL and emulated Manish Pandey's record of taking the same amount of balls to reach the landmark. Despite Kohli's best efforts, RCB posted 183 on the board but in hindsight, they must be gutted to not have scored 20-30 runs extra to score at least 200 runs.

Virat Kohli's knock of 113* off 72 balls at a strike rate of 156.94 was overshadowed by Rajasthan's English opening batsman Jos Buttler, who played out a match and man-of-the-match winning knock of 100* off 58 balls. Buttler had played at a strike rate of 172.41 and the English white-ball captain well and truly stretched his hands and got over his lean patch.

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Mohammed Shami questions RCB management and players' mindset

While speaking to Cricbuzz after the RR Vs RCB clash, Mohammed Shami lashed out at the RCB players as well as the management for relying upon Virat Kohli alone to score runs. Shami admitted that Kohli likes to lead from the front with the bat, be it with the Indian team or his franchise in the IPL but RCB cannot put the entire burden on his shoulders. Shami, who was the highest wicket-taker of the 50-over WC last year, also stated that Bengaluru's batting line-up needs to stand up if they want to help the team go forward.

"Kohli has always performed, whether for the Indian team or RCB. But how can RCB put the entire burden on Kohli's shoulders? The rest of the batters need to step up." - Shami said via Cricbuzz

Virat Kohli is just 8 IPL games away from emulating MS Dhoni

After emulating Manish Pandey's record last night, Virat Kohli is now just 8 games away from emulating MS Dhoni in terms of 250 appearances in the richest cricketing league of the world. 8 more appearances will also help Kohli become the first player in IPL history to play all 250 matches for a single franchise. Dhoni's total of 254 matches have come for CSK and the Rising Pune Supergiants. When Kohli steps out on the field to take on DC on May 12th, he will be completing his 250th match in front of home support at the M. Chinnaswamy stadium.