Courtesy: BCCI/IPL/RCB
Dinesh Karthik, the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) batting coach and mentor, wasn’t happy with the pitches produced for the first couple of matches at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru for the home team in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 season. Following a tough defeat at the hands of Delhi Capitals (DC) by six wickets with 13 balls to spare, Dinesh Karthik stated that the pitches have been challenging for batters at their home venue, and they will talk to the curator about it.
Notably, in their latest IPL 2025 match at home, RCB got off to a flying start against DC, scoring 61 runs in just 3.4 overs with Phil Salt and Virat Kohli, but after a confusion between them led to the former’s run out, the batting lineup fell away drastically. During the Bengaluru innings, a few of the dismissals happened because the batters tried to loft the ball out of the ground, but it sat in the pitch for long enough for them to lose their shape and wickets.
At one stage in their batting effort, RCB were 125/7 in 17.1 overs before Tim David provided some late impetus, to help them reach 163/7 total, which was just about par for the course after Vipraj Nigam and Kuldeep Yadav delivered excellent spells of spin bowling. In the run chase, the top three batters of DC were sent back to the pavilion for single-digit scores while trying to play across the line before KL Rahul scored a very impressive 93* off 53 with seven fours and six maximums, to take his team over the line.
We trust him to do his job, and we will try and do the best of what we can: Dinesh Karthik about Bengaluru curator
Dinesh Karthik spoke at length about the pitch given for the first couple of matches for the IPL 2025 at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru, as per ESPNcricinfo, “In the first two games, we have asked for good pitches. But it's turned out in this way where it's been challenging to bat on, for sure. Definitely, this is not a pitch that's helping the batters too much. It's a challenging pitch. That has been the case so far in both the games that we have played.”
After discussing how the pitch hasn’t allowed the batters to rotate strike or hit big shots consistently, which forced their batters into mistakes due to no other option being left for them other than attack in the later stages of their innings, Dinesh Karthik categorically said, “We will obviously have a chat with the curator. We trust him to do his job, and we will try and do the best of what we can.”
Moreover, it is important to note that before losing to DC at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru, RCB have already gone down against Gujarat Titans (GT) in their first home match of the IPL 2025 campaign, while at the same time, they have won their first three away matches of the tournament.
