Source: IPL/BCCI
Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) breezed past a stiff target set them by Sunrisers Hyderabad to keep alive their playoff hopes in IPL 2023. Virat Kohli’s first IPL hundred since 2019 led the way, and yet another century stand with Faf du Plessis ensured that RCB had few alarms on the way to a target of 187. Here are our takeaways from the game.
Kohli comes alive
In you’re chasing in a must-win game, you would want to have Virat Kohli on your side. He loves a challenge, and he loves chasing. Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) had to win this game while chasing on a Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium pitch that wasn’t easy to bat on. Virat Kohli came out attacking from ball one, and didn’t stop till he fell for an even 100. He was timing the ball to perfection. He never tried to over-hit, and the ball found the sweet spot of his bat most of the time. Kohli has struggled against spinners, but today he tore Abhishek Sharma apart by making a small change. He played the spinners a lot straighter and hit the ball over the bowler’s head. Kohli has been dismissed thrice in the first over in this IPL, and each time, he has fallen to a left-arm pacer. SRH missed a trick by not playing Marco Jansen, or they could have given the new ball to T Natarajan. Kohli was unstoppable, and he made sure that RCB stayed in the hunt.
du Plessis’ consistency
Faf du Plessis complemented Kohli superbly. He scored 71 (47) balls and both men ran extremely hard between wickets during their 172-run partnership. Du Plessis now has 702 runs from 13 innings at an average of 58.50 and a strike-rate of 153.94. He paced his innings well, while Kohli was going hammer and tongs at the other end. He played the field taking quick runs, converting the ones into twos. By the time both he and Kohli were dismissed, they had sealed the match for RCB.
Source: IPL/BCCI
Klaasen special
This season, Henrich Klaasen has been the lone warrior for Sunrisers in many ways. Today was no different. The first ball he played, he waited for it to come to him and played a solid back-foot punch to the boundary. There was no stopping him from then on. RCB kind of helped his cause by feeding him more spin, the type of bowling that suits him the most. He took Shahbaz Ahmed and Karn Sharma apart. It was a display of clean hitting. No other SRH batter crossed 30. His incredible effort took them to within touching distance of 200.
Bracewell bashing doesn’t work
Sunrisers have often ended up losing matches they should have won because of their miscalculations. Against Lucknow Super Giants, bowling Abhishek cost them the match. Changing batting positions randomly has also been a problem. RCB have been the best bowling side in the powerplay. Their strength has been to pick up wickets in the powerplay overs, leaving the batting team to rebuild their innings. Hyderabad managed just 11 runs in the first three overs. Then the new opening pair of Rahul Tripathi and Abhishek took 16 runs off Wayne Parnell’s second over, and the momentum shifted. Yet again though, Sunrisers got their calculations wrong. They could have seen one or two balls of Michael Bracewell before trying to force the pace against him. Instead, they went hard and gifted two wickets in the over.
Siraj’s momentum-changer
Hyderabad were 182-4 after the 19th over, having scored 41 runs in the previous three overs. Mohammed Siraj has been phenomenal in the powerplay overs, but at the death, he has generally been expensive. Today, he bowled a phenomenal last over, giving away four runs and taking a wicket. He pulled the match back towards RCB.