There is a chance – and more than only slim – that the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB0 opening pair of Virat Kohli and Faf du Plessis could be broken up in the first half of the season itself!
RCB will kick start their IPL 2024 campaign on the opening night itself, taking on MS Dhoni’s defending champions Chennai Super Kings (CSK) unit at the raucous Chepauk.
RCB is not a team that backloads in the season and registers a flurry of wins in the second half of the league stage – such as Mumbai Indians or KKR have done quite a few times. That is mainly because the Chinnaswamy stadium is not their fortress because of their ordinary bowling attacks, which seems even weaker on paper than last season.
In that case, RCB will need their will need their big men, Virat Kohli and Faf du Plessis, to fire straightaway, in the first match and in the first half of the tournament if they are to get into the playoffs, something RCB failed to do last season. However, there’s a big catch in the expectations that the fans have from this epic duo.
Both of them are coming off very little cricket, and it could get really tough for them, despite their vast T20 experience, to get in the groove of the IPL straight away and hit the ground running immediately.
Faf du Plessis had a terrible start to his SA20 2024 campaign before he picked it up in the second half of the season. Virat Kohli has not played a game of cricket since 17 January, which was a T20I against Afghanistan in which he scored a duck.
You might see a change in RCB’s opening combination during IPL 2024: Aakash Chopra
Former India opener Aakash Chopra feels that if the pair don’t fire away in the first few matches, they could be broken up, especially with someone like Cameron Green in the side who had been sensational in the top three for Australia and Mumbai Indians.
Chopra said in his YouTube video, “RCB’s Faf du Plessis and Virat Kohli were a very successful pair last year. They may still be very, very good. The only caveat as to why I have not kept them in the top three is that Faf has played very little cricket since the last IPL.”
“If you leave aside one SA20 match, the performance was very ordinary. Virat also hasn’t played since the match against Afghanistan. In such a scenario, if Faf and Virat don’t hit the ground running, it could be a problem. You might see a change in the opening combination,” the commentator asserted.
Should Faf fail to do well in the first half of the season, RCB do have the services of Will Jacks, the dynamic England opener, to call up, but then it would require them to go to either Kohli or Maxwell to lead them.
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