IPL 2022, RCB vs RR, Top Performances: Dinesh Karthik, Shahbaz Ahmed' s 67-run stand, Jos Buttler's 70 and Yuzvendra Chahal's 2-15 are top three performances.
Brief Scores: Royal Challengers Bangalore 173 for 6 (Shahbaz 45, Karthik 44*, Chahal 2-15) beat Rajasthan Royals 169 for 3 (Buttler 70, Hetmyer 42*) by four wickets
Player of the match - Dinesh Karthik for a match-winning 44*(23)
The 13th match of Tata IPL 2022 saw the battle between the royals! The Royals from Rajasthan challenged the Royals from Bengaluru in the heart of Mumbai, the iconic Wankhede Stadium.
The battle between the royals have always been a neck and neck contest where they have played 25 matches against each other out of which Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) have got the better of Rajasthan Royals (RR) on 12 occasions while RR have won 10 games. There were 3 occasions where the match was abandoned.
RCB come from behind to clinch contest by 4 wickets
RCB skipper Faf du Plessis had no hesitation in bowling first on this dew-filled Wankhede wicket after winning the toss as on 71.4 per cent times, teams have won chasing in T20s at the venue.
RR started off in a little scratchy fashion and actually never got the momentum until the 17th over thanks to some tactical slower balls from Harshal “Variation” Patel. From the 17th over, the Jos Buttler-Shimron Hetmyer duo cut loose and smashed the not so well-known death over bowlers of RCB as RR ended up at 169 for 4 after 20 overs.
RCB started in quite some fashion where the batters put their foot on the peddle right from the first over. They were going all guns blazing until new RR recruit - Yuzvendra Chahal - got them back with some classic leg breaks and a run out of Virat Kohli, But that wasn't enough for RR as the Dinesh Karthik-Shahbaz Ahmed show stole the game from the jaws of RR and handed a close victory to the southern franchise.
Let’s scan the top three performances from the RCB vs RR game, IPL 2022:
Jos Buttler serves RCB bowlers with 6 sixes after slow start
After 16 overs, when RR’s score was 107-3, Jos Buttler was batting very unlike Jos Buttler with a strike rate of just over 100 (39 off 36 balls). Not many would have thought that Rajasthan Royals would end up at 169 at the end of the innings. But all thanks to Buttler and Shimron Hetmyer who just tonked the RCB bowlers all over the park in the death overs.
Buttler smashed Siraj for consecutive sixes in the penultimate over of the innings to bring up his fifty off 42 balls. The England wicketkeeper-batter did a copy paste of the 19th over by again hammering two consecutive sixes off young pacer Akash Deep. Buttler finished not out with a swashbuckling 70 runs of 47 balls and dealt only in sixes! To everyone’s surprise, he didn’t hit a single four in his 47-ball innings!
Read More: IPL 2022, MI vs RR, Top Performances: Buttler's 100 elevates RR; Bumrah's 3-17 goes in vain for MI
Shabashhh Karthik – Victory from the Jaws of Defeat!
At a crucial stage when the chips were down for RCB at 87-5 after 12.3 overs, walked in the new finisher of RCB, Dinesh “Innovative” Karthik! RCB still needed 88 runs off 42 balls at 12.57 runs per over. The task was almost impossible with all the big guns back in the pavilion. But as they say, cricket is a funny game and its never over till the last ball is bowled.
Karthik and Shahbaz Ahmed held their nerves and targeted India’s veteran spinner, Ravichandran Ashwin in the very next over. Karthik smacked Ashwin for 3 fours and a flat six! While Karthik took charge from the moment he arrived, Ahmed was playing sensible cricket and was playing second fiddle to Karthik. As soon as Prasidh Krishna came on in search of wickets for RR, Ahmed shifted from the first gear to overdrive with a neat late cut boundary and on the last ball punished a mediocre short ball from the bowler over the mid-wicket boundary for a maximum. Not just that, Ahmed showcased his true potential when he took on one of the premium death over bowlers, Trent boult for a six and a four. Boult came back with a straight and fast yorker to knock over Ahmed’s stumps. But the redemption was a bit too late as the damage was already done by the Ahmed-Karthik partnership of 67 runs which took the game away from RR.
Ahmed scored a brilliant 26-ball 45 with 3 massive sixes and 4 boundaries at a healthy strike rate of 173. While the star of the match - Dinesh “Awesome” Karthik - flew at a strike rate of 191 to score 44 off just 23 balls which included 1 six and 7 innovatively manufactured boundaries.
Read More: IPL 2022, RCB vs KKR, Top Performances: RCB scrape through after Hasaranga, Harshal dismantle KKR
Chahal makes his move with the spinning ball!
While the other bowlers in Rajasthan’s camp went for over 8.50 runs per over, RCB’s very own Yuzvendra Chahal just went for 15 runs from his quota of 4 overs picking up two crucial wickets. Well, well, well, we never thought we would be writing this but the former RCBian almost snatched victory from RCB in the middle overs with some classical leg spin. He first managed to dismiss the dangerous Faf du Plessis whom he had just managed to dismiss once in his T20 career before this match. He further went straight through the defence of David Willey who had no clue when the ball went between his bat and pad to crash onto the middle stumps. Chahal just didn’t stop here, he pulled of a smart run out with the help of a charismatic effort from the diving Sanju Samson to dismiss the former RCB captain, Virat Kohli.
Though, Chahal’s efforts weren’t enough to win the game for Rajasthan as Ahmed and Karthik played him out cautiously with just 4 singles when he came back for his final over.
What’s to come
Mumbai Indians (MI) will lock horns with Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at the Maharashtra Cricket Association (MCA) Stadium in Pune on April 6. The game is scheduled to begin at 19:30 hours IST.
Here are some of the top twitter reactions from RCB vs RR, Match 13th, IPL 2022:
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