5 Reasons Why RCB Got Eliminated from IPL 2023

Virat Kohli-starrer Royal Challengers Bangalore were defeated by Gujarat Titans in their final league game on May 21 and eventually got eliminated from IPL 2023. While there were some exceedingly well individual performances from RCB players, they failed as a unit in the ongoing season of the cash-rich league.

Here are the 5 reasons why RCB got eliminated from IPL 2023:

1. Over-reliance on Top 3 batters

Faf du Plessis, Virat Kohli and Glenn Maxwell scored most of the runs throughout the IPL 2023 season for RCB. The RCB skipper smashed 730 runs at a strike rate of 153.68 and 8 fifties.

Virat Kohli scored back-to-back hundreds in the last two league games and was consistent throughout the season scoring 639 runs with a strike rate of 139.82. He scored 6 fifties as well in the IPL 2023 edition.

On the other hand, Glenn Maxwell scored at a staggering strike rate of 183.48. Even after the top 3 RCB batters did most of the scoring, they never got support from the middle order leading to their failures in most games.

2. Lack of match-finishers

Dinesh Karthik played the role of the match-finisher for them in the IPL 2022 edition. However, he had a terrible outing this year which proved to be costly for the Royal Challengers Bangalore side. Shahbaz Ahmed and Anuj Rawat were given a few opportunities but both of them failed in the lower middle order. RCB didn’t have any overseas batter who could bat at number 6 or 7.

3. Inconsistency in selection

Inconsistency in team selection has always been a problem with Royal Challengers Bangalore side. They gave a couple of chances to Michael Bracewell and was then dropped only to be picked again for the last few games.

Josh Hazlewood too was dropped from the playing XI despite decent performance and was replaced by Wayne Parnell. Wanindu Hasaranga too didn’t get much opportunity to prove his worth in the IPL 2023 edition and hence they never had a game-changing spinner in their lineup.

4. Poor bowling performance

Mohammed Siraj was their stand out bowler right throughout the tournament but he never got support from other bowlers. Siraj got 19 wickets in 14 games including wickets in all the tough phases of the game.

The RCB management kept changing his partners with the new ball but never got consistent results. Their star spinner Wanindu Hasaranga failed to deliver this year and was eventually dropped from the playing XI.

Harshal Patel and Akash Deep were quite ineffective with the ball while they constantly kept changing their overseas pacers.

5. Injury Issues

RCB got a major setback when Rajat Patidar was ruled out of the IPL 2023 even before the start of the tournament. Josh Hazlewood too was unavailable for the first half of the season. Reece Topley injured his shoulder while fielding in one of the games and David Willey got injured midway as well. All these injuries had a major role to play in the elimination of RCB from IPL 2023.