Kohli open to ABD keeping wickets

 KL Rahul has been impressive with the bat having reeled off three half-centuries in the last four matches for the Royal Challengers Bangalore but it’s his work behind the wickets that has been a bit untidy.

The part-time stumper has missed a couple of crucial stumpings and a catch spread over the matches against Kolkata Knight Riders and Rising Pune Supergiants and that has left skipper Virat Kohli pondering if it’s worth trusting Rahul’s glove-work as the league gets tighter.

Against Kolkata, he let off Andre Russell early in his innings twice and the all-rounder made RCB pay for it. In the match against RSP, he failed to stump Saurabh Tiwary on 25 and the southpaw went onto fetch himself a half-century.

Kohli doesn’t want AB de Villiers to don the big gloves as he believes the South African adds more value being on the field with his swift movements and ability to pull off difficult catches.    

“The only other option is making AB keep and that’s too far costly for us to miss out on him in the field,” said Kohli when asked if he had other options for the wicketkeeper’s job. “There are three or four people that I can bank on in the field and if you take one more away, then it literally leaves me with nothing.”

Given the poor fielding effort by RCB against RSP, Kohli can’t be faulted for the strategy he is adopting. He was, however, open to change should it necessiate.

“Chances have gone down in the last two games, you obviously don’t feel good about those things,”  he pointed out. “You obviously need to sit down and think if we are compromising too much on the keeping bit and actually letting go of very important chances at very important stages of the game and actually understand how many balls AB is fielding in every game. If it is not a big number, we would not mind considering that option as well.”

Kohli also clarified that Chris Gayle was left out for RPS and not rested.
“No, Gayle was not rested. We chose Travis Head in place of him because we felt like we needed more solidity in the middle order. Travis stirkes the ball really well and I think KL (Rahul) and me have been opening well for the team.”