Kolkata Knight Riders mentor Brendon McCullum bemoaned his side's helpless batting that cost them the match against Royal Challengers Bangalore on Wednesday. Batting first, KKR attempted to get moving and were limited to 84/8 out of 20 overs, before RCB pursued it down serenely.

“I just think we weren’t able to enter the game at any stage, none of our top-order batsmen were able to get anything going,” McCullum said after the match. “Defending 85, you might just win one in 50 games. I think RCB was very good tonight. We’re very poor with bat in hand. You’re not going to win too many games from 40 for 6. But we’ve got to bounce back because we’ve got another game in a few days.”

“This (loss) is going to affect a little bit in terms of our confidence. We need to work hard on ensuring our morale doesn’t drop at the same time having those honest conversations around how we improve,” McCullum said.

“But I still firmly believe that we have a side which can be there later on in the tournament, come finals. We just need to improve slightly. We’re still fourth in the tournament, which is very fortunate for us. Destiny is still very much in our hands. We have just got to tighten up some of those areas where we’re deficient tonight and make sure we improve on our performance.

“That’s just a bit frustrating because we spoke at length before the game about trying to be positive and show some strong intent, so that’s something we’ll have to address in the next few days.”