Royal Challengers Bangalore produced a complete performance to trump Delhi Capitals in their IPL 2023 match at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium on Saturday to return to winning ways after two successive defeats.
Asked to bat first, Royal Challengers put on board a par for the course 174 for 6. The slowness and grip on the pitch were certain to make the chase a tricky one for the Delhi Capitals, and it happened just so.
The Delhiites were never in control and they were limited to 151 for 9 as RCB emerged with a 23-run win. Debutant pacer Vysakh Vijay Kumar was the pick of RCB bowlers, taking 3 wickets conceding 20 runs in his quota of 4 overs.
Virat Kohli scores another fifty
However, the march of RCB to victory started through an energetic display by their top order. Virat Kohli led the way with a fluent 50 off 34 balls with 6 fours and a six. He looked good for plenty more but his effort to loft Lalit Yadav found Yash Dhull inches inside the deep.
But then there were useful 20s by Glenn Maxwell, skipper Faf du Plessis, Mahipal Lomror and Shahbaz Ahmed, and all of those runs came at a strike rate of over 135 that RCB never really got stalled in the game.
There was a time when they lost 3 wickets in as many balls as Kuldeep Yadav and Axar Patel dealt some heavy blows to the RCB middle-order. But the aforementioned handy knocks ensured that RCB ended up with a par score on the board.
DC lose 5th game in a row
Despite DC’s wretched run in the IPL 2023 — they have now lost all their 5 matches so far — the RCB needed some quick blows upfront to maintain the upper hand and their bowlers delivered that in stunning fashion.
Prithvi Shaw was run out in the 4th ball of the chase and DC lost Mitchell Marsh and Yash Dhull in the next couple of overs, reducing the visitors to 2 for 3.
It was the worst imaginable start while trying to hunt down 175 and they might have hoped for a turnaround to be engineered by skipper David Warner. However, Vysakh ended that hope dismissing the Australian left-hander.
At 30 for 4 with no real experience left in the batting line-up, DC was always trying to catch the moon for the rest of the innings.
