Shane Watson disappointed to have let Kohli and Vettori down this year

Royal Challengers Bangalore are last in the points table this year. After 13 games, the franchise has managed to win just 2 games. Even if they win their last league game against Delhi Daredevils at the Feroz Shah Kotla on Sunday, they will still end up as the bottom ranked team this year.

It wasn’t the ideal start to the season for RCB when they lost KL Rahul and Sarfaraz Khan days prior to the start of the season. To make matters worse, their star players Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers missed the first couple of games due to injury. Despite their comebacks, RCB couldn’t end their run of defeats. Their prolific opener Chris Gayle never got going this year and hit just a solitary fifty. Star all-rounder Shane Watson, who led in the absence of Kohli initially, also had a poor season.

Watson was utterly disappointed after his returns in 2017. Usually a very prolific player in the IPL, the right-handed batsman could manage to get 67 runs in 7 games along with 4 wickets at an economy rate of more than 10 runs an over.

“It’s incredibly disappointing because I’ve always had so much success in the IPL,” Watson tells Wisden India on the sidelines of SIX Questions, an event at the Padukone-Dravid Centre for Sports Excellence in Bangalore on Tuesday (May 9). “To come here and not perform like I can and I have in the past, it has been a lot of soul-searching at certain times.

The former Australian all-rounder was disappointed in letting his captain and the coach down with his under-par performances. “More than anything, what I feel the worst about is letting the team down, especially being an allrounder. That has been the most disappointing thing for me – letting Virat (Kohli), Dan Vettori (the coach) and the franchise down, because RCB have looked after me incredibly well over the last two years,” Watto said.

Since calling quits from international cricket, Watson has operated as a freelancer playing in the CPL, PSL and also the IPL. While there are perks of playing in various Twenty20 leagues, there are a few perils attached to it as well. It gets difficult for a player to come into a high-profile tournament and get going immediately as they don’t play much cricket in between the tournaments. He certainly felt that this year turning out for RCB.

“It’s been a lot of fun (turning freelance), there’s no doubt,” he says. “To be able to have more intense time of playing in a tournament and then having time off and spend time with family compared to international cricket, but also start setting up the next phase of my life as well. I’m setting up a couple of businesses, it’s given me time to start that transition,” Watson said.

“But the biggest challenge has been to be able to get myself and my skills up to the standards. When you’re playing international cricket all year round, your skills are just naturally there. This IPL season has really exposed where my skills are. You see the guys who are playing international cricket, they come into IPL like how it was when I was playing international cricket… It’s an easy transition because you’re playing international cricket – a step up – all the time.”

Asked if he will return to the cash-rich league next year, Watson was a noncommittal, “In some capacity, yes.” And how do we interpret it? “Not sure yet,” was his response. It is still not clear if Watson will come back to the IPL next year as a player. Going by his performances and current fitness standards, chances of him coming back to play are slim.