IPL 2020, Royal Challengers Bangalore season review: Top performers, match results, video highlights

The 2020 Indian Premier League campaign was a good one for the Royal Challengers Bangalore, especially when one compares it to the three previous seasons. A playoff appearance is not an easy thing to achieve in the world’s most popular T20 league, after all. The franchise knows that all too well.

But the season ended in much the same way as the three previous three: No trophy to show for and plenty of questions about Virat Kohli’s captaincy.

IPL 2020 started well for RCB but it ended with five consecutive defeats and that is when everyone started talking about whether the team needs to look elsewhere for leadership. With the bat, Kohli had a strictly par season, despite being the team’s second-highest scorer, mainly due to a poor strike-rate.

Still, there were some bright spots for the team as well. Devdutt Padikkal carried his good form from domestic cricket into the IPL too. His poise and timing stood out and he will certainly be one to watch out for in the future. Washington Sundar was brilliant in the Powerplay for RCB and showed that he is back to his best. Similarly, Mohammad Siraj gave a glimpse of the wild talent that makes followers of domestic cricket rate him highly. If he can become more consistent, RCB already possesses the core they need for the future.

RCB won three of their first four matches and Kohli kept talking about the work they put in before the start of the season. And it looked that way too. They seemed to have plans in place for every opposition and more importantly, their bowlers were executing those plans too with the odd mishap.

The wins kept rolling in. They won seven out of their first 10 matches. But then, they inexplicably lost their next five. They clearly need another finisher lower down the order and on the evidence of what we saw this season, Shivam Dube is not that man.

Best performers

Padikkal and AB de Villiers were the batting stars of the season for RCB.

Padikkal, who was sort of dragged down by the absence of an in-form opening partner, was reduced to being a one-man army at the top of the order. He can play shots all around the wicket and he can play them with the grace that seems natural to left-handers.

ABD, on the other hand, did things only he can to win some matches almost single-handedly for RCB. Once again, RCB’s ‘alien’ had little support.

Kohli, Finch and Dube scored some runs but their SR’s were poor and that hurt the team in the middle overs. The galling inability to bat according the situation saw the team often struggle to take momentum into the death overs.

Chahal was the undoubted star with the ball for RCB. The fearless manner in which he flights the ball is a lesson for all other spinners in the game and time and again, he came to RCB’s rescue during the season. His 21 wickets (with a brilliant economy rate of 7.08) were way ahead of all the other bowlers in the team.

Chahal’s brilliance also highlighted RCB’s biggest weakness – the lack of wicket-taking bowlers. If you don’t take wickets in the T20 format, you will never be able to hold down the opposition to manageable totals and more often than not, that is what happened to the RCB. In Chris Morris, they found a dependable overseas star while Washington performed his role pretty well but the attack lacked teeth at critical moments.

Still, compared to their performances of the recent, this was a pretty good season for the new management in place and changes must be resisted on that front. They lost steam in the end but before that happened, they did enough to give their die-hard fans hope for the future.

Video highlights of all RCB matches in IPL 2020

Match 1:

Match 2:

Match 3:

Match 4:

Match 5:

Match 6:

Match 7:

Match 8:

Match 9:

Match 10:

Match 11:

Match 12:

Match 13:

Match 14:

Eliminator:

Highlights videos courtesy: iplt20.com