Ahead of his side’s match against Delhi Capitals (DC) in Delhi, Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) spin bowling coach Malolan Rangarajan spoke on Devdutt Padikkal, expressing happiness with his performances so far and hoping that he keeps up with his consistency during the back end of the tournament. At the third spot in the points table with six wins and three losses, and on a high after their first win at home, RCB will be aiming to avenge a loss at home to DC when they take on the Red and Blue side at Arun Jaitley Stadium on Sunday. DC is in the second spot, with six wins and two losses, giving them 12 points. After an up and down start to the season, Padikkal found consistency as a hard-hitting number three and has scored two successive fifties against Punjab Kings (PBKS) and Rajasthan Royals (RR).

In eight matches so far, Padikkal has delivered 230 runs for RCB at an average of 32.85, with a strike rate of over 156 and two half-centuries. After being picked by RCB for Rs two crores in the mega auction last year, Padikkal has been adopted well to a counter-attacking role, unlike the opener role he had during seasons 2020 and 2021 during his first stint with RCB, which saw him score 473 and 411 respectively, including a century and six fifties.

Speaking during the pre-match presser, Malolan said as quoted by an RCB press note that RCB was looking for a left-handed batter during the auction and it was surely an advantage that Padikkal had been with RCB before and batted a lot for them, particularly with Virat Kohli.

“When Devdutt was with RCB, he had two stellar years. He scored close to 500 runs. He has had an unfortunate runoff form in the last three years, but again, just with the way we prepared in the auction, we were very clear about wanting a left-hander. And Devdutt sat conveniently for us on day two. I am not going to beat around the bush and say that we went for him right away and we got him on day two,” said Malolan.

“The benefit of having worked with him before, myself and a lot of players, even Virat, who has batted a lot with him. So, having the comfort of knowing that Devdutt is available to be picked up later helped, number one, that is as far as the auction is concerned,” he added.

The spin bowling coach that as soon as Devdutt found himself a part of RCB set-up yet again, he was given a lot of clarity regarding his role and he did put a lot of work to perfect it.

“He was very hungry and he has been very receptive to a lot of technical and tactical ideas both Dinesh Karthik and Andy Flower have thrown at him. And finally, the way he has gone and batted for us. There have been a couple of tricky situations and tricky conditions also. He has taken the bull by the horns and batted exceedingly well. But again, this is just nine games done and the business half of the tournament is still there and we are filled with optimism both for Devdutt and for the team,” he added.

Speaking on Rajat Patidar’s captaincy so far, Malolan said that he has done a “tremendous” job so far.

“All the games that he has captained, we have had various games, a few games where there was not too much pressure, and there were games where the pressure was right up, and he has conducted himself in a manner where there is absolute calmness and clarity in decision making, the way he has rotated his bowlers. That shows how good he has been this year, and like I said, there is a second half of the IPL to go and we hope he continues that way,” he concluded.

Squads:

Delhi Capitals Squad: Abishek Porel, Karun Nair, KL Rahul(w), Axar Patel(c), Tristan Stubbs, Ashutosh Sharma, Vipraj Nigam, Mitchell Starc, Kuldeep Yadav, Dushmantha Chameera, Mukesh Kumar, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Sameer Rizvi, Madhav Tiwari, Donovan Ferreira, Tripurana Vijay, Darshan Nalkande, Faf du Plessis, T Natarajan, Ajay Jadav Mandal, Manvanth Kumar L, Mohit Sharma

Royal Challengers Bengaluru Squad: Philip Salt, Virat Kohli, Devdutt Padikkal, Rajat Patidar(c), Jitesh Sharma(w), Tim David, Krunal Pandya, Romario Shepherd, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Josh Hazlewood, Yash Dayal, Suyash Sharma, Lungi Ngidi, Liam Livingstone, Swapnil Singh, Manoj Bhandage, Rasikh Dar Salam, Nuwan Thushara, Jacob Bethell, Mohit Rathee, Swastik Chikara, Abhinandan Singh.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)