Last season's runners-up Royal Challengers Bangalore finished with the worst record of IPL 2017, which was a stark departure from their success in 2016.
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They were without Mitchell Starc once again - the left-arm fast bowler opted out citing a busy Australia season - and seriously missed KL Rahul the batsman and wicketkeeper who was ruled out with injury, but what hurt RCB the most were the failures of the same men who carried them last year: Chris Gayle, AB de Villiers, Shane Watson, Yuzvendra Chahal and the skipper, Virat Kohli.
After a hat-trick of defeats near the middle half of IPL 2017, Kohli was terse in his assessment of where RCB stood when he said "If we play like this, we don't deserve to win." They did not get better, and by the end of the league stage Kohli was left to comment that all he and his team-mates could do was laugh at their own misery.
IPL 10 record: P 14 | W 3 | L 10 | NR 1 | Points 7
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Of their three wins, RCB's 21-run success over a strong Gujarat Lions side would have given them renewed belief of getting their campaign back on track because of the contributions of Gayle, Kohli and Yuzvendra Chahal, their highest wicket-taker in 2016. Gayle smacked 77 off 38 balls, with seven sixes, to power an opening stand of 122 with Kohli, who made 64 off 50 balls. Unbeaten cameos from Travis Head (30 off 16) and Kedar Jadhav (38 off 16) completed a strong finish and gave RCB a total of 213/2. Chahal was given the new ball and claimed 3/31 to help keep Gujarat to 192/7.
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You cannot get lower than the lowest total in ten seasons - 49 all out in 9.4 overs. Set a target of 132 against Kolkata Knight Riders at Eden Gardens, RCB were simply annihilated with not one batsman getting to double-digits.
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Watson led the team in its three games while Kohli was nursing a shoulder injury, and they lost two of them. Kohli's return did not bring about the desired impetus, with hollow defeats interspersed with the odd spark of form. His own batting was a concern. Kohli finished as RCB's highest run-getter, with 308 in ten innings, but his strike-rate of 122.22 is the lowest for any batsman with over 300 runs this season. This channeled into his leadership, which lacked that killer edge he had in 2016.
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Purchased for Rs 1 crore at February's player auction (from a base price of 30 lakh), spin-bowling allrounder Pawan Negi emerged the team's leading bowler with 16 at an average of 12.31, surprisingly conceding runs at just 6.12 an over which, when you look at the bloated economy rates of Stuart Binny, Aniket Choudhary, Tymal Mills, Sreenath Aravind and Watson, really stands out. Among his best performances were 1/21 in four overs when opening the bowling against Gujarat; 2/17 in four against Mumbai Indians; 1/12 in three versus Rising Pune Supergiant; and 3/10 as RCB won their last match with Delhi Daredevils. Negi's lower-order batting was far from spectacular, but 144 runs at a strike-rate of 129.72 were decent.
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Gayle and Watson had poor tournaments - Watson termed this as his "worst ever" - and it really is tough to pick who was worse. Gayle had one half-century in nine innings, and it was the one in which he became the first batsman to 10,000 runs in T20s.
Watson, who was a pivotal bowler in 2016 as RCB reached the final, managed just five wickets in eight matches while bleeding runs at 9.13 an over. For his repeated blemishes at the back end of opposing team's innings, when his medium pace proved cannon fodder, Watson was RCB's weakest link.
His batting was equally hopeless: 71 runs in six innings with a best of 24. England fast bowler Mills, purchased for Rs 12 crore in his first appearance in the auction, and from a base price of 50 lakhs, mustered five wickets in five matches at an economy of 8.57.
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A terrible campaign. RCB were plagued by injuries, pull-outs and loss of form and never managed to regain momentum. With plenty of uncertainty as to the rules for next year's auction, where there is still ambiguity as to whether the five-player retention rule will apply, the franchise may be in for a major overhaul in 2018.