AB de Villiers keeps RCB playoff alive

Losing out to toss to Sunrisers Hyderabad sent the home team Royal Challengers Bangalore to bat in the Chinaswamy Stadium. Knowing that it is a do or die situation, Royal Challengers Bangalore’s skipper and Indian team captain Virat Kohli came to crease to open the innings for his side. However on the last ball in the first over of their batting’s innings Parthiv Patel was sent back to the pavilion as he mistimed the ball which went up  high and ended up in the hands of Sandeep Kaul. The score was 6 runs for the loss of 1 wicket after the first over. What was meant to be batting disaster for the home side became the turning point of the match.

The Iron Man of cricket came to bat and the whole stadium started chanting “AB, AB” and it was obvious that he had to score today if Royal Challengers Bangalore to have a shot at the playoffs because they are way down on the points table. The fiery innings of 69 runs off 39 balls had twelve 4s and one over boundary. It was a glorious moment for the RCB fans everywhere but Virat Kohli could not hold it off from the other end as he got bowled by the magical Rashid Khan after hitting him for a boundary which made way for Moeen Ali. The left handed Ali soon picked up the pace of the game after struggling a bit in the first and also started hitting everything with a strike rate of 191. 1 that saw him scoring 65 runs off 34 balls. The partnership between AB and Ali established the foundation of colossal score on the board and their legacy was taken on by Grandhomme as he scored 40 runs of 17 balls. After the end of 20 overs, the home team put up a score of 218 runs for the loss of six wickets.

The second innings started as Shikhar Dhawan and Hales came to the crease. Dhawan as usual hit a couple of boundaries and then got caught and bowled by Chahal, who had the best bowling economy rate for the winning team. After Dhawan’s departure the skipper Kane Williamson came to bat. With Hales on the other side, Williamson was putting up a fight to chase down this massive score but Hales fell soon after that leaving the score at 64 for the loss of two wickets on the last ball of the 8^th over. That led to the arrival of Manish Pandey, who single-handedly proved that no matter if the other 10 players of the team are performing well one player can still make them lose. Pandey’s 62 came off 38 balls but he also knew that he was going to be the villain as he couldn’t connect the bat to the ball. Williamson fought till his last breath when he played a wonderful sweep but that accidently got stuck in Grandhomme’s hadn on the boundary line. That was the moment, when everyone knew that Royal Challengers Bangalore have won the match and still have a slight chance to make it to the playoffs.

A great game was played as Royal Challengers Bangalore wrapped up the league leaders in 204 runs for the loss of 3 wickets and won the match by 14 runs.