Virat Kohli reveals the reason why AB de Villiers came out to bat at number 6 against Kings XI Punjab

The Royal Challengers Bangalore suffered their second consecutive loss against the Kings XI Punjab in IPL 2020 last night. One can say that Chris Gayle, Mayank Agarwal, and KL Rahul performed extremely well with the bat. However, there were also some confusing decisions that the Royal Challengers Bangalore made in the match. 

The one decision that left everyone surprised was to send AB de Villiers to bat at number six in the first innings. Aaron Finch and Devdutt Padikkal had provided a solid start to the RCB team, but they could not breach the 200-runs landmark at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium. 

Virat Kohli has had many good partnerships with AB de Villiers. Still, he wanted to keep a right hand-left hand combination going in the middle, which is why he demoted de Villiers from number four to number six. All-rounders Washington Sundar and Shivam Dube received a promotion, but they could not do the job that AB de Villiers usually does. 

In the post-match interview, Kohli spoke about his decision to demote the Proteas star and said:

“We had a chat (AB batting at no, 6) and there was a message from outside about the left-hand, right-hand combination. Sometimes these decisions you take, don’t come off. We are pretty happy with the decisions we took but sometimes it doesn’t come off.”

The fans even speculated that KXIP had two leg-spinners in the team and that could have been the reason why RCB promoted the two left-handers above AB de Villiers. Chris Morris’ cameo saved the day for RCB in the first innings, otherwise, KXIP could have won the game much earlier than they did. 

RCB will be in action against the Rajasthan Royals tomorrow night. It will be interesting to see if they continue the same strategy because even RR have two leg-spinners.