RCB succumb at home as KKR beat hosts by 7 wickets in Bengaluru

RCB had posted 182/6, following a strong showing by Virat Kohli.

Bengaluru: It took Royal Challengers Bengaluru ninety-five minutes to raise the hopes of their faithful at the M Chinnaswamy stadium on Friday. It took Kolkata Knight Riders twenty-nine minutes to put an end to those hopes.

Of course, the game went on till 10.46 pm, but that six-over Power Play stretch was all it took for a realist to understand that the hosts were about to succumb to their second loss. And so it was.

KKR notched up a seven-wicket win on the back of blinders from Phil Salt (30), Sunil Narine (47) and Venkatesh Iyer (50) to reach 186 for 3 in 16.5 overs.

Easy as it might be to credit their batting unit for the win, it was their bowling which set things up because keeping the Virat Kohli-inspired RCB down to 182 for 6 in 20 overs was impressive.

From the scorecard, it would be natural to assume that Kohli was in fine form en route to his unbeaten 83 from 59 balls, but it was hardly the case. The former skipper looked scratchy, helped no less by the fact that the pitch was sticky.

That’s precisely why KKR chose to field first after winning a good toss at the venue. But when Kohli and Cameron Green (33) were amid their 65-run second-wicket alliance, there was hope of a 200-plus score.

The same hope lived in Glenn Maxwell’s charmed knock of 28, but three quick dismissals and Kohli decelerating meant Dinesh Karthik (20) had to perform yet another one of his slam-bang miracles. He did with three sixes, and a decent enough score was realised.

Bengaluru doesn’t gather much dew these days, but whatever did come was enough to have the ball come onto the bat nicely. That’s all KKR openers Salt and Narine needed to go through with their strokes.

It looked like a hack job, especially when Narine was on strike, but aesthetics hardly mattered because the role of the openers was to make the most of the hard ball and the lack of fielders outside the circle.

The first six overs, aka Power Play, yielded 85 runs for no wickets, meaning KKR needed 98 runs from the remaining 84 deliveries.

The end of the opening alliance on 86, and Narine’s exit six runs later, got the fans going, but Venkatesh Iyer (50) built on the momentum. Even as his partner and KKR skipper Shreyas Iyer struggled to put bat to ball, Venkatesh was a stoke-filled package of southpaw brilliance.

The only bowler he seemed to mistime was RCB’s ‘Impact Player’ Vyshak Vijaykumar. The Karnataka paceman finished with figures of 4 for 23 and a scalp.

Perhaps the only thing an RCB player got right on the night!