Coming on the back of a comprehensive win over the Chennai Super Kings, Royal Challengers Bangalore took Kolkata Knight Riders to the cleaners as they defeated them by a huge margin of 82 runs. While RCB’s innings was more or less all about the AB de Villiers show, Kolkata could drag themselves to only 112 after being outfoxed by the spin duo of Washington Sunder and Yuzvendra Chahal.
Choosing to bat first on a relatively slower track compared to previous Sharjah wickets, Virat Kohli and his men had a cautious start until a certain de Villiers entered the party. It was de Villiers with the bat and the spinners with the bowl that stood out for the RCB in their win against the Knight Riders.
For the Kolkata team though, there was just no single person who could be called as not guilty in an effort that looked much like a waste of energy as the match ended in a classic one-sided affair. To pick two it would be the new entrant Tom Banton and the old fox Andre Russell, who would be called the culprits of the desert for KKR.
All these players and their contribution (or the lack of it) in the game forms the part of the Hits and Flops segment of the match.
When de Villiers entered the ground with RCB at 94/2 in the 13th over and even after him being there for more than 10 deliveries and captain Kohli at the other end, the innings wasn’t actually moving one bit as the team slumbered to 112/3 in 15 overs. But as Kamlesh Nagarkoti was brought back into the attack, the former South African captain started smoking the balls out of the park.
From 11 off 10 deliveries, de Villiers went damn crazy as ended up with 73 off 33 balls, which means, he scored the next 62 runs off just 23 balls. It was his inning that got RCB from ending at 160-175 to 195. The inning was so special, mostly because no other batsman had the ability skills, and execution to control the pace of the bowler that well.
Sundar has been bowling brilliantly for the Challengers since the last 3-4 games, While in other games had generally been just economical, in this one, he chose to diversify his role as a wicket-taker and took two crucial wickets of Eoin Morgan and Nitish Rana.
More than the wickets, what was important was the fact that he became un-hittable, and batsmen (who had not got out by then) tried to play him off as easily as possible, thereby stopping the flow of runs. The Tamil Nadu born ended up with the figures of 2/20 in his four overs.
Saini wasn’t among wickets in the match, he took only one. But that wicket was the one that shifted the balance in RCB’s favour. In his second over, he got rid of Tom Banton, the new entrant in the KKR playing eleven, with a ball that wasn’t just a ripper but almost a perfect length ball, beating Banton on all fronts and crashed through his defense. Saini though ended up with the figures 1/17 in three overs.
Andre Russell is someone that KKR looks up to win them 3-4 games of the season single-handedly. However, this series has been one of the worst for the West Indian as he hasn’t been able to contribute much with the bat for the team.
Apart from the game against Rajasthan Royals where he scored a quickfire 24 off 14 balls, nothing worth noticing has come from Russell’s bat. Even in today’s game, after bowling two responsible overs, the guy bowling theirs over was asked something and killed as well.
Playing only his 1st IPL game, Banton couldn’t actually handle the system as he was bowled by a KKR fast bowler. Banton's wicket put pressure on others to follow suit and thus many other people were wither bowled or caught out. But not being able to score, putting pressure on others make Banton a flop for sure.
Having lost the game in such a bad way, Dinesh Karthik and Co. would cool off for the next three days before facing Mumbai Indians in Abu Dhabi. RCB would be up against the Kings XI Punjab in two days' time though.
Powered by Froala Editor