Royal Challengers Bengaluru head into their meeting with Mumbai Indians in Raipur as the Indian Premier League champions and still in control of their title defense, but the numbers behind their season point to a side leaning heavily on Virat Kohli. RCB sit fourth with six wins and four losses, and their recent slide in batting output from positions four to eight has narrowed the margin for error.
The most telling split has come from the middle and lower order. In RCB’s first five matches, batters from positions four to eight averaged 39.30 at a strike rate of 190.77, with two half-centuries, 23 fours and 33 sixes. Over the next five matches, that return fell to 21 at 148.58. The decline has made the side less balanced just as the season tightens.
Kohli has remained the constant. He has scored 379 runs in 10 matches at a strike rate of 164.06 and has already compiled three half-centuries. RCB, though, have scored 48.12 per cent of their runs this season while he has been at the crease, a figure that underlines how much of the batting has run through him. When he has gone early, the consequences have usually been immediate. RCB have lost 14 of 20 innings in which Kohli was dismissed within 30 balls, and they have lost all four defeats this season in which he faced fewer than 30 deliveries.
The top of the order has not fully solved the problem around him. Phil Salt had made 202 runs in six matches before a finger injury sent him back to the UK, and Jacob Bethell has managed 43 runs in four innings as an opener, with a top score of 20. That has left the lineup to patch together innings rather than control them from the start.
There has still been individual success within the squad. Romario Shepherd has contributed 79 runs in six innings at an average of 26.33 and a strike rate of 143.63, while also taking five wickets in nine matches, though his bowling average of 44.00 and economy rate of 12.94 show the strain he has been under. Jitesh Sharma has scored 64 runs in eight innings at an average of 8.00. Josh Hazlewood has taken nine wickets in seven matches at 28.77, but in defeats he has managed three wickets at an average of 62.33 and an economy rate of 11.68. Krunal Pandya and Suyash Sharma took 11 wickets from five matches early in the season, then five over the next five, another sign that the team’s control phase has faded.
That leaves RCB with a batting lineup that still has enough depth and variety to stay competitive, but recent results have exposed a sharper problem in the middle order. Kohli’s early dismissals against Gujarat Titans and Lucknow Super Giants coincided with collapsed batting performances and defeats, a reminder that the champions are still most secure when he bats deep. Against Mumbai, they go in with a strong record overall, but with the same question hanging over them: whether the rest of the lineup can hold its end long enough to keep the burden from landing on one man again.
