KXIP, given to chase 176, needed 17 of the final over. After Farhaan Behardien picked up a single off the first ball of the final over, Marcus Stoinis put away Chris Jordan for a six and a four to bring the equation down to six runs from the final three balls. But Stoinis couldn’t score of the fourth ball and could only score two twos of the final two deliveries. RCB kept the hosts to 174-4 and took home two points from the match.
Hashim Amla and Murali Vijay added 45 at the top of KXIP’s chase, after which Wriddhiman Saha and Vijay added 43 runs. Despite a mid-innings stutter, when KXIP lost Saha and David Miller (dismissed for his first-ever duck in the IPL) to successive deliveries, the presence of a well-set Murali Vijay meant KXIP were always in the chase.
The Man of the Match is @ShaneRWatson33 for his excellent 2/22! #KXIPvRCB #PlayBold pic.twitter.com/CKWvAC5YmJ
— Royal Challengers Bangalore (@RCBTweets) May 9, 2016
KXIP needed 37 from the final three overs and 24 from the last two overs. Watson was brilliant in the 19th, conceding only seven runs. Jordan, who had gone for 47 runs in 3.3 overs, bowled three very good deliveries at the end to deny the hosts. Watson (4-0-22-2) – the only RCB bowler to go for under 7.50 runs per over – and Yuzvendra Chahal (1-30) were the pick of the six bowlers Virat Kohli used.
Earlier in the evening, after being given the chance to set a target, RCB were off to a quick start. Virat took strike first up and opened his account with a cut through backward point. Thereafter though, for the next few overs he settled down to play second fiddle, as KL Rahul got stuck into the KXIP bowlers. All the good work by the opening pair came undone shortly after as KC Cariappa, bowling his first over, dismissed both the well-set batsmen, and Axar Patel clean bowled Shane Watson. From 63 for no loss, RCB had slipped to 67-3.
.@RCBTweets won by 1 run #KXIPvRCB #VIVOIPL pic.twitter.com/onM2Kz0wQc
— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) May 9, 2016
De Villiers was dismissed by Sandeep in the 18th over, but not before he had punished the bowler for a boundary and a six earlier in the over; he made 64 from 35 balls – needing only 20 balls to score his last 48 runs. Sachin Baby made a useful contribution at the other end; the Kerala lad kept picking up the singles and ran the quick twos to hand the strike back to de Villiers. Sachin (33 from 29 balls), who batted at five, added 88 runs with de Villiers, before he was run out of the last ball of the innings.
( Courtesy : IPLT20.COMÂ )
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