Royal Challengers Bangalore have tasted yet another defeat in the IPL this season. Their recent loss came against Delhi Capitals in the Chinnaswamy in Bangalore. This is their 6th consecutive loss of the season. Problem is with the form this season? The form of the players? What is going on with the team? It is not just this season that they are struggling, they are struggling from past 3 seasons to get their combinations right.

I would like to go back to the auction days. RCB in recent years hasn’t been the balanced side when compared to the rest of the teams. If we look at the players they bought in the auction in the past 3 years

Retained Players IPL 2016: Virat Kohli, Chris Gayle, AB de Villiers, Mitchell Starc, David Wiese, Sreenath Aravind, Varun Aaron, Kedar Jadhav, Mandeep Singh, Adam Milne, Sarfaraz Khan, Harshal Patel, Abu Nechim, Yuzvendra Chahal

IPL 2016 new buys:

Shane Watson- all Rounder
Stuart Binny- All Rounder
Kane Richardson- Bowler
Samuel Badree – bowler
Travis Head _ Middle order bat

The players they bought in with big names made them pay big money but they never lived up to their expectations. They played Shane Watson out of his position in most of the games just to compensate the middle order and he couldn’t perform. He played 16 games scored 179 runs at an avg of 13.76.

Stuart Binny another all-rounder who did have a massive impact with Rajasthan Royals he had some wonderful games where he took RR over the line but a local lad from Bangalore couldn’t get enough opportunities to make his worth in the team and he failed to capitalize his chances. He played 14 games scored just 63 runs and just picked 1 wicket.

Kane Richardson- Kane Richardson was the find for Australian cricket during their transition period. He played just the 4 games and picked up 7 wickets.

Samuel Badree- Did play a single game in the IPL 2016 edition.

Travis Head – One of the promising young stars of the Australian cricket seemed to the replacement of Mike Hussey but never got going in the IPL. He just played 3 games and scored 54 runs with an avg of 27.

RCB have never been the side where they have given enough opportunities for the youngsters. I have never seen players apart from Virat Kohli and Sarfaraz Khan being given as much as opportunities like some other teams to give them the confidence and all the Indian domestic players who were signed, never got their opportunities in the kit bags to prove their point in the IPL like Praveen Dubey, Vikramjeet Malik, Iqbal Abdulla, Akshay Karnewar, Vikas Tokas, Sachin Baby.

IPL 2017 squad:Virat Kohli (C), AB De Villiers, Chris Gayle, Yuzvendra Chahal, Harshal Patel, Mandeep Singh, Adam Milne, Sarfaraz Khan, Sreenath Aravind, Kedar Jadhav (WK), Shane Watson, Stuart Binny, Samuel Badree, Travis Head, Sachin Baby, Iqbal Abdulla, KL Rahul (WK), Avesh Khan.

These were the players where RCB retained. It looked like they had the squad ready to look for the first silverware. They had the best batting unit that one could dream of in their team. Virat Kohli and Chris Gayle as openers. Kedar Jadhav, Shane Watson, KL Rahul, Travis Head all the big names in the batting department so RCB chose not to buy any batsmen in the auction so they went on to buy bowlers and they were successful too.

IPL 2017 new buys:

Tymal Mills, Billy Stanlake, Pawan Negi, Praveen Dubey, Aniket Chaudhary. RCB paid 12 Cr to bring Tymak Mills. He was one of the specialist T20 bowlers from England. He had all the varieties in his bowling and looked a perfect match for the Chinnaswamy wicket. He bowled at 140+ consistently. He was the highest paid fast bowler in the history of IPL. He just played 5 games and took 5 wickets with an avg of 30. His performance was not up to the standards that RCB were expecting and he went unsold the next year.

Billy Stanlake: RCB bought the big fast bowler from Australia and he was a great buy for the team but he just played 2 games and picked up 2 wickets. Chinnaswamy is a small ground with the pace of his the ball kept flying everywhere.

IPL 2018: IPL 2018 is a situation where you could retain only 3 players from your current squad and you could use 2 RTM to retain, players, back. RCB had a chance to dissolve their whole squad and get in fresh legs in the team. They retained Virat Kohli, AB De Villiers, and Sarfaraz Khan and they used RTM for Pavan Negi and Yuzvendra Chahal which was rightly so with Chahal as he has stood out for RCB every single season that he has played. But left out Chris Gayle, KL Rahul, Kedar Jadhav, Shane Watson and list continues. Last season, IPL 2017 they had issues with their bowling department and they had a great chance to get the best Indian fast bowlers. they did find some of the raw talents from the domestic circuit like Navdeep Saini, Aniket Choudhary, Kulwant Khejroliya, Murugan Ashwin, Washington Sundar, Mohammed Siraj but when you look at these names, we do not see any real experience in the T20 circuits at the IPL level so they had a setback. Tim Southee, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Colin de Grandhomme, Moeen Ali, Chris Woakes were the foreign players in the list. They had the pace of Coulter-Nile and swing from Southee but they had their issues they never really got going. Chris Woakes added some fire in the squad and he was not consistent with his performances. Kohli was again at the receiving end by not utilizing his resources to their full potential.

IPL 2019: RCB never had a chance to sign some great Indian talent in their bowling department but they tried to strengthen their batting by getting SHimron Hetmeyer but he has not been the same player as he played for WI against India. Bowlers have figured him out to take his wicket.