The match between Chennai Super Kings and the Royal Challengers Bangalore on Sunday turned out to be the Ravindra Jadeja show, as the all-rounder swept through the RCB attack with both the bat and the ball and became the prime focus. But there was another talking point, revolving around another all-rounder, Washington Sundar and why he batted at number 3 in the RCB inning.
In the match, Chennai batted first and thanks to the heroics of Ravindra Jadeja put up a total as high as 191 runs to chase for their Bangalore based counterparts to chase. But, as it turned out in the end, it was too steep to chase for the RCB batters to chase, as Jadeja seemed to be tailing them with only one thing on his mind, which was CSK’s win. Amongst all of this, one thing that stood out was Virat Kohli’s decision to send Washington Sundar to bat at the number 3 spot when it was RCB’s turn to bat.
Washington Sundar scored 7 runs off 11 balls, batting at number 3
RCB’s skipper, Kohli in the post-match ceremony did shed light on his thought that went behind this decision. He said, “We will continue to use guys at 3 because we have Maxi and AB to follow. We will continue to use that depth. We’ll throw in guys there and ask them to change the game for us.”
This statement by Kohli showed that the RCB batting line up will continue to have such calls taken in order to try out the diversity in the skills of their batsmen. In the first game of the match, Washington Sundar had been sent to open the inning, but he returned to the dugout without enjoying much success. And, since then he had been batting in the middle order until this game against the Chennai Super Kings came along, where he was given the duty to bat at the number 3 spot.
Having lost the match against CSK, RCB are placed at the second spot in the points table, with their opponents in this game taking the top spot, by the virtue of their superior net run rate. RCB are all set to play against the Delhi Capitals on Tuesday, and in that game, it would be interesting to see which batsmen they send out to bat at the number 3 spot.
