Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) and Mumbai Indians (MI) treated one and all with a nerve-wracking clash that stretched till the Super Over. RCB skipper Virat Kohli score??d the winning boundary in the last ball to take his team across the finishing line.

This was the second instance in Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020, where ??Super Over was required to decide the winner. Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) and Delhi Capitals (DC) played the first, on September 20.

Bollywood actress Anushka Sharma took to Instagram to express excitement after her husband Kohli and AB de Villiers guided RCB to the victory in the Super Over. Anushka quipped the game as “too exciting for a pregnant lady”.

She lauded the squad and wrote: “What a team this one!”

RCB edge past MI in a nail-biting encounter

Aaron Finch and Devdutt Padikkal gave RCB a cracking start as ?the duo combined 81 runs before the former fell prey to Trent Boult.

Finch departed after scoring a quick?fire 52. Captain Kohli (3 off 11?) once again failed to contribute anything substantial with the bat.

AB De Villers looked in an ominous touch, clobbering the MI’s bowlers all over the park with incredible ease. He scored unbeaten 55 off 24 balls with the help of four fours and as many sixes.

An explosive cameo from Shivam Dube ( 27 ?off 10) propelled the Challengers to an imposing target of 201/3 in 20 overs.

Chasing the target, MI was never really in? the game for the entirety of the first half. It was a stellar partnership between Ishan Kishan and Kieron Pollard that nearly snatched the victory from the jaws of defeat.

MI needed 18 runs from the l??ast over. Kishan smoked back??-to-back sixes to bring down the equation to 5 off 2 balls.

The southpaw, however, departe??d in the penultimate delivery, finishing just a run short of his well-deserved century.

Pollard scored a boundary of the last over to take the match into Super Over which they eventually lost after RCB chased down the paltry target of?? eight runs without breaking any sweat?.

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Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) got off to a winning start in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 as they defeated Sunrisers Hy??derabad (SRH) by 10? runs on Monday, September 21.

Devdutt Padikkal impressed one and all with a fiery half-century and added 90 runs for the first wicket? partnership with Aaron Finch. However, both Padikkal and Finch lost their wickets in quick succession, reducing RCB to 90/2 in the?? 12th over.

Virat Kohli failed to score anything substantial as he fell prey to Thangarasu Natarajan. But AB de Villiers held the innings from one end, and his late cameo propelled RCB to 163/5 in twenty ove??rs.

Chasing 164, SRH couldn’t capitalise on a fluent start from Jonny Bairstow and Manish Pandey as a dramatic middle-order collapse saw them bundlin??g out?? for 153.

De Villiers amazed by his own innings

De Villiers, who scored 51 runs off 30 balls, later remarked that even he was not able to believe that there were no signs of rustiness in his batting, even after months of inacti?vity in the wa?ke of COVID-19.

“I surprised myself, to be honest. We had a competitive game in South Africa which was quite nice. It was important for me to get out there and I arrived here with a little bit of confidence. There’s a lot of Indian talent coming through and Aussie talent. We saw Josh Phillippe tonight, he is a great prospect,” said the Proteas ??star ??in the post-match conference.

‘Mr 360’ further stated that self-doubts began to grow in him after not playing the game for such a long time. But, he is pleased with his match-defining innings.

“When you come here and you haven’t played a lot of cricket so you do doubt yourself. But we have worked really hard in the last four weeks as a team and as an individual to get myself in some kind form. Tonight was a very pleasing start. Unfortunately got out form a run-out at the end but I am pretty happy with the basics that seem to be in place,” de Villiers concluded.

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Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) will clash against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), o??n Monday (September 21), to commence their proceedings in the upcoming edition of Indian Premier League (IPL).

The Challengers has been a perennial underachiever in the league. Despite possessing a star-studded squad, with some of the biggest names in T20 cricket donning RCB’s jersey, the franchise has failed to deliver time and again.

In a quest to the elusive first championship title, RCB has acquired the services of veterans like Aaron Finch and Chris Morris to bolster their squad.

While Morris will definitely improve RCB’s long-standing issue of leaking too many runs in death overs, Finch’s inclusion will give them varieties in their batting line-up. The Aussie skipper is most likely to be paired with Parthiv Patel to open the innings.

Former India cricketer Sunil Gavaskar, however, feels otherwise. Gavaskar recently wrote that he would love to see Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers playing as openers in the UAE.

“On pitches that will get slower, it may be a good idea to have both the champion batsmen[ Kohli and de Villiers] open the batting while the ball is hard and new and will come on to the bat nicely than when the spinners are operating. Leggie Yuzvendra Chahal could be a match-winner for RCB on those pitches,” Gavaskar wrote in his column for Sportstar.

‘Why a team like RCB hasn’t won the title as yet is a puzzle’: Gavaskar

‘Little Master’ further lamented that RCB’s failure to win the IPL trophy in twelve attempts is beyond his comprehension. He also remarked that over-reliance on big names like Kohli and De Villiers might be one of the reasons.

“Why a team like Royal Challengers Bangalore hasn’t won the title as yet is a puzzle. Any team that has Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers should never be short of runs and maybe that’s also a problem, for when these two failed, as humans sometimes do, then the others haven’t put their hands up.”

Gavaskar pinned his hopes on the new coaching setup to turnaround things for RCB. Simon Katich has been roped in as a new head coach while Mike Hesson is the club’s Director of Cricket.

“They have a new coach and will be hoping that this will be their year,” concluded Gavaskar.

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