Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) have started their Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 journey with a 10-run win against the Sunrisers Hyderabad on Monday, 21 September, in Dubai. According to captain Virat Kohli, this was a comeback and a half considering they lost six games in a row, before their first win in 2019.
“Those who were part of six-nil last year, we know the importance of this win. We had lost four or five but never lost six in a row,” exulted Kohli in a video uploaded by RCB after the win.
AB de Villiers, who scored 51 runs off 30 balls looked very satisfied with the win. “My goal was to get 160 when I was batting. [The way I was batting] showed that I was on the right track. I was very happy that we reached that 160 mark. Anything less would have put us under a lot of pressure,” he said.
De Villiers was jubilant because of the way his team won. He heaped praise on Yuzvendra Chahal and Shivam Dube, who pegged the Sunrisers’ batting line-up back in the last five overs. Sunrisers needed 43 runs in the last five overs with Jonny Bairstow playing at 61* (41). In came Chahal, who cleaned bowled Bairstow and Vijay Shankar on consecutive deliveries to inspire an RCB comeback.
Skipper Kohli was particularly happy with the win as his team won defending a total that was not even 170.
“On a pitch that was difficult for the bowlers in the 2nd half, especially because of the dew, the boys showed a lot of character today,” he added.
Devdutt Padikkal, the 20-year old Karnataka batsman, set the momentum for RCB at the start. Opening in his debut game in the IPL after amassing 609 runs in the Vijay Hazare Trophy and over 500 runs in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, he counter-attacked from the start. With a strong backlift, he was able to generate a lot of power with his wrists, which made Australian limited-overs skipper Aaron Finch at the other end to play the second fiddle. He scored 56 runs with a strike rate of 133.33.
“It was a great feeling [to start off with a win]. Last year, we couldn’t start off well so we wanted to make sure that we got a win straight up this year. This [win] will set the momentum and hopefully, we can carry this on,” said Padikkal.
Another chief architect of the win was the fast bowler Navdeep Saini. Saini, who was hitting speeds of 140 km/hr consistently, came on to bowl the 18th over when Sunrisers needed 29 off 18 balls. He took wickets of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Rashid Khan by disturbing their timbers and gave away just 7 runs in the over, finishing with the figures of 4-025-2. He was particularly content with the fact that it was a team performance and getting a win in the first game itself was a great feeling.
On the other hand, it wasn’t a great evening as far as Sunrisers were concerned as it was a series of unfortunate events for them, dictating the course of the match. They lost Mitchell Marsh due to an injury in the first over of his bowling (fifth over of RCB’s innings) and limped off the field after bowling just four balls.
When Sunrisers’ batting started, skipper David Warner was run-out after a straight drive from Bairstow touched Umesh Yadav’s fingers on the way to stumps, finding him out of the crease. Then, in the 17th over of their batting innings, all-rounder Abhishek Sharma and Rashid were involved in a collision when the latter was ball-watching and came in between Sharma’s running trajectory, resulting in Sharma being run-out.
After being at 121-2 in 15.1 overs, Sunrisers collapsed to 153 all out in 19.4, losing 8 wickets for just 32 runs.
Sunrisers play their next game against the Kolkata Knight Riders on Saturday, 26 September, while RCB will face the Kings XI Punjab on Thursday, 24 September.
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