IPL is a marathon – Dinesh Karthik on RCB’s lessons after defeat against RR

RCB fell to a loss for the first time in IPL 2026 as Rajasthan Royals made it four in four. However, it wasn’t the best of conditions either as a delayed start complicated matters for the batters. RCB’s batting coach and mentor, Dinesh Karthik pointed out after the game that a marathon league like IPL has its own shares of ups and downs.

Talking in a post-match video, “It's important to understand that in a tournament like IPL, it's a marathon. You're not going to win every game, but if the team keeps showing character, keeps fighting, that's all we need.”

Shedding light on the conditions, Karthik added, “First up, I felt the pitch was not that easy to bat on. Let's start with Salt. He got an absolute snort up. Again, we picked up pace, but wasn't really coming on like Dave's dismissal. It just showed that the pitch was sticky. It's quite a wonderful effort in spite of all the challenges that we had to get to the score that we did.”

Karthik also heaped massive praise on Rajat, stating, “Rajat Patidar was special. It's just great to see him play so well in terms of shot making, but also understand the situation of the game and the way he made sure that he was there almost right up to the end shows his character. Very happy as a group seeing how well he reacted to that tough situation.”