Virat Kohli and A B de Villiers shared a breathtaking 157-run stand off 87 balls as Royal Challengers Bangalore secured a comfortable 45-run win over Sunrisers Hyderabad in their opening match of the Indian Premier League on Tuesday
Bangalore: Both the connoisseur and the commoner got their money’s worth on a very warm yesterday night here at the Chinnaswamy Stadium.
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A batting beauty was promised by the curator and the batting was more than beautiful, a lot of brutality on the part of AB De Villiers first and the prodigy Sarfaraz Khan towards the end, combining nicely with Virat Kohli’s finesse to eventually set up a 45-run win for Royal Challengers Bangalore over Sunrisers Hyderabad.
Royal Challengers Bangalore’s AB de Villiers slams one during his 42-ball 82 knock against Sunrisers Hyderabad on Tuesday. Pic/AFP
The visitors, looking at a required rate of 11.4 at the start, got off to a furious start, which is only expected when you have someone like David Warner around, but a target of 228 was simply far more than they could handle.
It didn’t help there was yet another failure for Shikhar Dhawan, who fell to offie Parvez Rasool’s first delivery. And once a marauding Warner (58, 25b, 4x4, 5x6) fell, caught off the pull against Shane Watson, the sun soon set on the visitors who had opted to chase in the first place.
Gayle falls early
Earlier, the sizeable crowd that fell silent when Chris Gayle fell in the second over, quickly got over the shock. After all they were to witness a roaring 87-ball, 157-run first-wicket stand between Kohli (75 off 51 balls, 7x4s, 3x6s) and De Villiers (82 off 42 balls, 7x4s, 6x6s) as RCB headed to a commanding 227 for four.
Royal Challengers Bangalore skipper Virat Kohli hits one on the on-side en route his 51-ball 75 on Tuesday. Pic/AFP
Skipper Kohli had wanted De Villiers to bat with freedom and the worthy turned it on with gay abandon. A pulled boundary, a straight six and square cut for four off SRH’s bowling mainstay Ashish Nehra in the fourth over of the innings set the home side and De Villiers on the way. Nehra bowled only one more ball after that over, leaving the field with what looked like a groin problem, adding injury to insult for a change. There were 14 sixes and 20 fours in all during the RCB mauling of the SRH bowlers for whom the ever improving Mustafiqur Rahman alone looked the part.
Sarfaraz shines
Seamer Bhuvneshwar Kumar and leggie Karan Sharma both went for over 50 runs from their four overs each, young Sarfaraz wading into the former towards the very end and Watson laying into the latter.
The duo were, of course, only finishing what was started and carried on by Kohli and De Villiers. The shots were played to all parts of the field and over as both the Hyderabad bowling and fielding wilted. Their batting, save for Warner, was no better and thus RCB’s campaign got off to a fine start.
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