Thriving on the road

Virat Kohli returned to his home patch at the Arun Jaitley Stadium as Royal Challengers Bengaluru scored a facile victory over Delhi Capitals on Sunday.

Set a target of 163 runs, the Rajat Patidar-led side romped home with nine balls to spare. The latest win takes RCB to the top of the table with 14 points. The victory was also a sweet revenge over DC that had done the same at Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru.

Sweet it may be, RCB were the least likely amongst the teams to win after losing three quick wickets inside the powerplay. They were reduced to 26/3 by the fourth over.

DC skipper Axar Patel knew fully well that they had to take wickets early to give themselves a chance after registering a below average score of 162 with short boundaries.

In a brave move, Axar opened the bowling for his team and accounted for two quick wickets in the powerplay. First, Jacob Bethell was brilliantly caught by Karun Nair at deep square leg and then Devdutt Padikkal chopped one from the left arm orthodox bowler onto his stumps. Soon enough Patidar was brilliantly run out by Nair at the non-striker’s end. Delhi knew they were in the game and tried to put the squeeze on the chasing team as a result RCB could only score 35 runs in the first six overs.

However, a hard fought fourth-wicket partnership between Kohli and Man of the Match Krunal Pandya made sure that RCB were still in the game. Ultimately, their 119-run partnership for the fourth wicket in only 84 balls took the match away from the home team.

Pandya was struggling to hit boundaries in the first part of his innings but suddenly found his mojo, becoming the aggressor in the partnership. Pandya went unbeaten on 73 and hit five boundaries and four big sixes to take his team home.

Kohli, who is now the season’s leading scorer, played the anchor’s role to score a gritty fifty. By the time Kohli was dismissed — he was caught at the boundary rope by Mitchell Starc off the bowling of Dushmantha Chameera — RCB only needed 18 runs off 12 deliveries. Tim David then applied the finishing touch and scored a five-ball 19.

Earlier, Delhi Capitals failed to push the pedal, stumbling and stuttering to an average score of 162 for the loss of eight wickets. At one stage, they were only scoring at a little more than seven runs an over. They had only racked up 117 runs till the end of the sixteenth over. If not for Tristan Stubbs’ 18-ball 34, the final score could have been far less.

Stubbs and Vipraj Nigam added 38 runs in only 15 balls to bring some respectability to DC’s total.

Brief scores: Delhi Capitals: 162/8 in 20 overs (Rahul 41, Stubbs 34; Bhuvneshwar 3/33, Hazlewood 2/36); Royal Challengers Bengaluru: 165/4 in 18.3 overs (Pandya 73*, Kohli 51; Axar 2/19)

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