Hello and a warm welcome to yet another blog on the daily match reviews on this year’s IPL. I will cover the game played between the Royal Challengers Bengaluru and the Gujarat Titans at the Chinnaswamy, which by far was the most one-sided and also a dramatic game. So let’s get started!
Faf du Plessis yet again won a toss and opted to field first on the same track where SRH plundered 287 runs. But things were completely different as the pace bowlers gave no room for the batters to hit boundaries and reduced the Titans to 23/3 in the powerplay, a dream at the Chinnaswamy. Crucial partnerships between Miller and Shahrukh, and between Tewatia and Rashid did increase the scoring rate but Vyshak, Siraj, Dayal and Green were simply outstanding and restricted the Titans to 147. The chase started as if RCB were chasing 288, as Faf just smoked everyone to the fence with Kohli giving him good company. But what followed next was almost impossible as when Faf fell, the middle-order, in order to boost the team’s NRR, picked out fielders everywhere as RCB lost 6 wickets, but DK and Swapnil ensured that the drama which was created couldn’t take the game away from RCB as we got home comfortably by 4 wickets and 38 balls spare.
In RCB’s 3rd consecutive win, the win was set up primarily by the pace bowlers, executing their plans, especially with their short balls, cramping the GT batters and the wicket surprisingly did give some assistance. But Faf was absolutely brilliant with the bat, along with Kohli set the tone for a big win, chasing the total in about 12 overs I would say. But once Faf got out, RCB should have put on some brakes and moved on as the Titans also used the short-ball ploy with Joshua Little picking up 4 wickets in quick succesion followed by Noor’s 2 wickets put RCB in a spot of bother as they had only DK and Swapnil as respectable batters and needed about 31 runs to win. But Rashid Khan’s shoulder injury played a vital role for RCB as he couldn’t bowl properly and DK smartly targeted him to remove RCB from the flurry of wickets falling and Swapnil played two important sweeps of Noor to get RCB home. But another huge factor was RCB’s fielding today, except one drop catch from Karn, they were outstanding as Kohli produced a superb run out of Shahrukh and Vyshak picked up a blinder near the boundary to remove the dangerous Tewatia. The Titans need to address how to play aggressively in the powerplay with bat, which RCB are doing so well, but would be proud of the way they staged a stunning collapse and making them keep leg slip and short leg in a T20 game. But in the struggle to gain NRR dominanace, RCB finally did go just ahead of Punjab, sitting on 7th as the Titans are second from bottom. So overall, an all-round performance from the men in red and blue, but in the necessity to boost their NRR, they gave Titans an outside chance but in the end were comfortably home.
So that’s it for today. Tomorrow is a double-header Sunday as CSK play PBKS and LSG play KKR. So stay tuned for that!