Virat Kohli, the Royal Challengers Bangalore batsman, has urged his team to put aside the injury-enforced departure of AB de Villiers and get their Champions League T20 campaign on track after the opening defeat to Warriors.
"Every game is important when you only have four games," Kohli said on Wednesday. "Tomorrow's game (against Kolkata Knight Riders) is important, AB not being in the team is a huge loss. I'll probably have to take more responsibility now, we should just take it as a challenge."
The Knight Riders are staring elimination after defeats in their first two matches, but Kohli expected a tough match on Thursday. "I was surprised KKR lost two games in a row, they are a full-strength side when all the players are fit and in form," he said. "They are an explosive side, if you let them go they can hurt you badly. It will be important to put them under pressure from ball one."
The Royal Challengers were in charge of their opening encounter against Warriors before a late surge gave the South African side a last-ball victory. Kohli said the team had learnt from that defeat. "In a T20 game, unless a team needs 15 or 16 runs an over in the end, you haven't really won the game, and the key is to not get relaxed," he said. "One or two 15-run overs can turn the game. The Warriors did that against us, we were cruising till 10 overs of the chase, a few good overs here and there cost us the game. They batted really well, Johan Botha came and smashed a few, Ashwell Prince batted well, and in the end Nicky Boje and Wayne Parnell contributed, so you never know who's going to do what in a T20, so you can never relax."
The senior bowlers Daniel Vettori and Dirk Nannes bowled out early against Warriors, leaving the inexperienced local pair of Abhimanyu Mithun and S Aravind to deal with the pressure of bowling the final two overs. Kohli said the Royal Challengers didn't have designated death-overs specialists. "Unless you have someone like [Lasith] Malinga in the side you can never rely on anyone bowling the death overs, you can't pre-plan it," he said. "So I guess we just go with the situation of the game, I think Aravind bowled a brilliant last over, just one slower ball that fell short, other than that he bowled a brilliant last over."
With a majority of the games in the CLT20 going into the final over, Kohli said the close defeat had some positives as well. "It's all about learning, all these bowlers if they become experienced in the last overs, and if they come out successful in those, that will really help in high-pressure games going forward."