Bengaluru, May 17 (IANS) Andy Flower, the head coach of Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), said the side has been re-energised and is very motivated to have a strong finish to the IPL 2025 league stage, which restarts on Saturday with their clash against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium.

RCB are on the verge of entering the IPL 2025 playoffs after securing eight victories in 11 matches. The Rajat Patidar-led side needs just one more win to confirm their spot in the last four stage of the competition.

“We had a meeting back at HQ in Bangalore on Friday afternoon and my sense is the group is re-energised and they are very motivated to have a strong finish to the league stages. Coming back from the break, I don’t think it’s been a terrible thing for us, even though we had such momentum in the tournament.”

“It’s given Rajat a little bit of time to recover from his hand injury. It’s given Salt a chance to recover from his illness and he looked sharp again in practice. We respect KKR as opponents, of course. They had such a great season last season. They’ve got some very dangerous players. So we will have to be right on top of our game to take them down and that’s our intention,” said Flower in a video posted by the franchise on their social media accounts on Saturday.

For RCB to claim a top two finish, it becomes important that they win their remaining league games. Though their top two finish also depends on other teams’ results going in their favour, Mo Bobat, RCB’s director of cricket, said the side is very focused towards achieving it.

“When you’ve had a break like this, the key bit is getting back on track and getting back into your routines. We were in a really good place before the break, so the key bit is capturing that again and getting back to that. So we’re not looking too far ahead, we’re looking at the next game against KKR and we want to do that well.”

“Good atmosphere, good attitude amongst the group. Everyone’s really focused at the job in hand. They want to finish the season and this campaign well. We want to finish top two. So the boys are really focused on that,” he added.

–IANS

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