Maxwell, Bharat take RCB home. Harshal, Shahbaz and Chahal shine with the ball.
Royal Challengers Bangalore 153/3 (Maxwell 50*, Bharat 44, Mustafizur 2/20) beat Rajasthan Royals 149/9 (Lewis 58, Jaiswal 31, Harshal 3/34, Shahbaz 2/10, Chahal 2/18) by seven wickets
In the hunt for a place in the playoffs, the confident Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) met the dejected Rajasthan Royals (RR) in a one-sided showdown in favour of the former.
Rajasthan squander a great start and lose wickets in heaps
Rajasthan, after losing the toss, were sent in to bat by Bangalore. Their openers, Evin Lewis and Yashasvi Jaiswal, provided a dream start to their side but the RCB bowlers had a few different plans of their own. Purple cap holder Harshal Patel, with some able help of spin duo of Yuzvendra Chahal and Shabaz Ahmad brought back RCB into contention in the second-half of the first innings.
Lewis and Jaiswal started the innings with an attacking approach. Together, they built up a partnership of 77 runs in 50 balls, but after dismissal of both the openers, no other batter was able to make use of the stage set for a huge score.
Jaiswal scored 31 runs from 22 balls with three fours and two sixes and Lewis scored his maiden half century for the Rajasthan Royals. He got dismissed on 58 runs from 37 balls and his knock included five fours and three sixes. He continued his brilliant form from the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) where he scored a whopping 420 runs at an average of 52.5 with a strike rate of 164.7 in CPL 2021.
Sanju Samson then came to the crease but was able to score only 19 runs from 15 balls which included two sixes. This was an important wicket for RCB as Samson is the second highest run-scorer in IPL 2021. He got dismissed to Ahmad on the first ball of the 13th over just after the second time-out attempting an inside-out shot.
Harshal Patel and spin duo of Shahbaz Ahmad and Yuzvendra Chahal were spot on with their bowling. All the three bowlers were miserly in conceding runs. Patel took three wickets and that too in his last over of the spell which was also the last over of the innings while on the other hand, Chahal and Ahmad took two wickets each. Patel and Chahal conceded 34 runs and 18 runs respectively in their spells of four overs each while on the other hand, Ahmad conceded just 10 runs in his spell of two overs.
Rajasthan’s middle-order continued to struggle in this match as well. The RR top-order scored 100 runs in their first 11 overs with the loss of only one wicket but they were able to score only 49 runs in the last nine overs and lost eight of their wickets in the process. They were able to hit only two fours in the last 10 overs as compared to 8 fours and 7 sixes hit in the first 10 overs.
RCB’s Srikar Bharat (44), Glenn Maxwell (50*) blast their way to an emphatic 7-wicket victory
RCB openers, Virat Kohli and Devdutt Padikkal, started the innings with a bang and built up a partnership of 48 runs in 32 balls. Both the openers got one chance each. Kohli scored 25 runs from 20 balls which included four boundaries while Devdutt Padikal scored 22 runs from 17 balls which also included four fours.
Kohli got dismissed through a brilliant run out effected by Riyan Parag and Padikkal was bowled by Mustafizur Rehman.
After the dismissal of the openers, Kona Srikar Bharat and Glenn Maxwell built a match-winning partnership of 68 runs from 55 balls. Bharat scored 44 runs from 35 balls which included three fours and a six while Maxwell scored an unbeaten 50 runs off a freaking 30 deliveries which included six fours and a six.
RR bowlers were not at their best and their fielders were also sloppy. The Rajasthan bowlers did take three wickets in the match but all of them with the exception of Mustafizur Rahman were expensive in their spells.
The match was won by the Royal Challengers Bangalore on the first ball of the 18th over.
Points Table remains unchanged
With this victory, Royal Challengers Bangalore remain on the third place with 14 points in 11 games with a net run rate of -0.200 while Rajasthan Royals are on seventh position with four wins in the 11 matches they have played with a net run rate of -0.468 and are almost out of contention for the playoffs notwithstanding the various permutations and combinations of other results which might see them scrape through.
What’s to come on Thursday
Match number 44 will witness a clash between Chennai Super Kings (CSK) who are at the top with 16 points and Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) who are at the eighth position with four points from 10 matches played so far in the 14th edition of the Indian Premier League. The match is scheduled to took place at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium on September 30, 2021 at 19:30 hours IST.
Twitter Reactions as RCB defeat Rajasthan Royals
Royal Challengers Bangalore beat Rajasthan Royals by seven wickets with 17 balls remaining. RCB stay at number three in points table, Rajasthan at seven. Yuzvendra Chahal gets Man of the Match for his 2/18, Glenn Maxwell hits unbeaten fifty. Fans are congratulating RCB for its all round performance.
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