There might be structural change for the RCB next year, says coach Gary Kirsten

The Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), who is out of the competition of this year’s IPL, will play their final league stage game on Saturday against the Sunrisers Hyderabad. The Bengaluru team, who started the season with six straight losses, were the first to get knocked out of the tournament. And that has brought a lot of tension for coach Gary Kirsten, who believes that the team need “structural changes” in the set-up for the next season.

While the RCB brigade of players is still a happy bunch despite the defeat, the story is different for coach Gary Kirsten. Overall in the Indian Premier League, the former Team India coach’s experience hasn’t been so great. That makes it four IPL seasons where a team has failed to reach the playoffs under his coaching. It is uncertain whether the RCB will retain him for the 2020 season.

Kirsten is also a strong believer of maintaining “continuity” but has experienced two dismal IPL seasons in a row so far. “I have been a fan of continuity. You want to build a core of players and culture and keep coming back to the same players. I think most successful franchises in IPL have done that and we are searching for that in RCB. There might be a structural change next year,” Kirsten told reporters on the eve of RCB’s final game against Sunrisers Hyderabad.

Kirsten aims to work on continuity and building a core of players

“I am hopeful and confident that we stick to the continuity of players because we need to really start building a core of players we believe in and back. Franchises that do a lot of chopping and changing every year, run into problems because IPL is not about an individual performing every IPL, it will just not happen, but if you keep backing the guys they can come good for you in one season,” he said.

If RCB loses to SRH, they finish at the bottom of the IPL 2019 points table. Kirsten admitted that it has been a disappointing season for RCB and that the team has struggled in certain areas and they would like to work on those specific areas next year.

“This has been a disappointing season. We would like to have had better results. We could manage only two points in the first half (first seven games). We started to get things going our way in the second half, but unfortunately in IPL you have a bad start, you are always going to be struggling and winning seven out of seven,” Kirsten concluded.

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