IPL 2020: Virat Kohli drops KL Rahul twice in two overs, Punjab captain makes him pay

However, the right-hander was also given a couple of reprives by none other than Bangalore captain Virat Kohli who dropped a sitter when he was batting on 83.

Trying to smash Dale Steyn’s low full toss, Rahul didn’t get enough to clear the long boundary in Dubai. Kohli moved to his right and seemingly overran a bit. Instead of staying back, he ran around the boundary and then took a step inward. Had he stayed back then he would have probably been at the right place.

pic.twitter.com/M8417kUlaW

— Rahul ® (@RahulSadhu009) September 24, 2020

Lady luck continued to smile on Rahul when Kohli once again dropped him on 89 an over later, this time off Navdeep Saini.

It was a slower ball to which Rahul got a leading edge as he went for the glory shot. As the ball sailed towards long-off, Kohli once again ran in but spilled it yet again. This was a much easier chance than the previous one. After the error, the RCB skipper wriggled his hand, gesturing that the ball might have been wet due to dew. Rahul ultimately went on to score a scintillating 132 not out off 69 balls.

After the match, Kohli had no qualms in taking the blame for dropping Kings XI Punjab skipper KL Rahul twice, which contributed significantly to their 97-run defeat here on Thursday.

Kohli felt had he not dropped Rahul, who remained unbeaten on 132, twice KXIP would not have been able to go past the 200-run mark. “I have to stand in front and take the brunt of it, not the best day in the office, couple of important chances of KL when he was set and that cost us 35-40 runs at a later stage. Maybe if we restricted them to 180 we wouldn’t have been under pressure from ball one of the chase,” said Kohli at the post-match presentation.

Most drops in IPL last six seasons:

Virat Kohli – 15
Ravindra Jadeja – 14
Robin Uthappa – 12
Harbhajan Singh – 12

“We know exactly where we went wrong and I have to put my hand up and say a couple of important chances went down. There are days when these kind of things happen on the cricket field, they happen and we have to accept them. “We have had a good game (against Sunrisers Hyderabad), we have had a bad game and now it is time to move on and learn from the mistakes we made,” said Kohli.

On sending the young Josh Philippe ahead of himself at number 3, Kohli said: “He has batted at the top of the order for Western Australia and done well in the BBL as well, early days in the tournament so we thought we will maximise his ability and see how we go from there on. We thought we will give ourselves a bit of depth in the middle overs.”