New Delhi: Andy Flower, the head coach of Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), said talismanic batter Virat Kohli looked fine despite suffering a finger injury while fielding against the Gujarat Titans in IPL 2025 and added that there was nothing worrisome about him.
In the 12th over of GT’s chase of 170, Kohli tried to prevent a boundary in the deep, but hurt his finger in the process, as the ball went for a boundary. With Kohli grimacing in pain, it meant the RCB physio came out and looked to treat the talismanic batter.
Though Kohli left the field, pain in his finger continued to bother, even as GT won the match by eight wickets. “Virat (Kohli) looks fine, he’s okay, there’s no worry,” said Flower at the conclusion of the match.
In their homecoming at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium, RCB were rocked by Mohammed Siraj’s 3-19, who the side let go of after a seven-year stint. “The toss was reasonably important, as there was quite a bit of dew, we knew that. The ball did grip off the seam in the first innings, it was fairly important.
“It wasn’t a typical Chinnaswamy wicket, where you expect the ball to come a lot quicker. That’s not the reason for the result, they played better than us today, Siraj bowled really well.
“Siraj bowled an outstanding spell with the new ball; his lines were good, his lengths were tight, and he threatened the stumps a lot, so good on him. We all rate Siraj very highly, of course, and we love Siraj. I think we had a good auction and put a good squad together, I wish Siraj all the success in the world,” elaborated Flower.
He also lauded Liam Livingstone’s 40-ball 54, along with Jitesh Sharma and Tim David hitting 33 and 32 to help RCB post a decent 169/8, which wasn’t enough in the end to win the match.
“We lost some wickets trying to be aggressive in the powerplay; that was obviously a big swing in the game. Often if you lose powerplay, you are in trouble. We had to fight hard, thought we scrapped really hard after the powerplay. Tim David, Jitesh and Livingstone did well to give us a total we could challenge them,” concluded Flower.
RCB, captained by Rajat Patidar, will have a four-day break before they travel to Mumbai to play against five-time champions, the Hardik Pandya-led Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede Stadium April 7.
