After a heroic 90-run knock from skipper Virat Kohli, the bowlers showed their class and restricted MS Dhoni-led Chennai Super Kings to 132/8 and power Royal Challengers Bangalore to a 37-run win at Dubai international stadium on Saturday.
Chasing 170 to win, CSK openers Shane Watson and Faf du Plessis came out in the middle at the crease. Watson took the strike and Chris Morris opened the attack for Bangalore. The second over was bowled by Saini who straight away bowled beautiful five dots deliveries and the pressure was up on the CSK batters.
Chris Morris, Navdeep Saini and Udana bowled remarkably well to keep CSK's openers in check in the early stages of their chase. With a cautious start, Chennai were 13 for loss of no wickets after the end of first three overs.
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Four bowling changes in first four overs worked for skipper Virat Kohli as Washington Sundar got the first breakthrough to get the key wicket by getting rid of Du Plessis, who holed out to the deep square leg for just 8 runs off 10 balls.
Washington Sundar once again struck with the new ball and after departing Faf he got Watson clean bowled and with this he had now got both CSK openers in the powerplay. After sweeping a ball for four, Watson (14 runs off 18 balls) tried to go for the big shot but completely missed the ball and Sundar rattled knocked his middle stump.
CSK were now two down with just 25 runs on the board. N Jagadeesan was the new man in, playing his first game of the season. After the end of first 10 overs Chennai reached and RCB bowlers were on top of their game and had applied the squeeze on their opponents. CSK now needed a special effort from senior batsman Ambati Rayudu and Jagdeesan to overturn the momentum.
100 up came for Chennai in the 11th over and with the run-rate going up, CSK's chances to win the match were going down. Rayudu-Jagadeesan brought up their fifty-run partnership in 13 overs, needing 95 off 42 balls. RCB further pushed CSK more on the back-foot after Jagadeesan (33) got run out by a Morris direct hit.
Dhoni was the next man in and got his team's hopes high by hitting a brilliant six to Chahal in the 16th over, who was already not having a good day with the ball but the leggie got Dhoni hitting exactly where he wanted on the last ball of his over. Dhoni got caught at long-off for with CSK needing 64 in last four overs.
In the very next over, Curran departed for a golden duck. Rayudu was removed by Udana, and with the this CSK had been well and truly beaten. In the 19th over by Chris Morris, Bravo and Jadeja were both caught out for 7 runs off 5 and 6 balls, respectively. In the end, RCB restricted CSK to 132/8 in 20 overs to win the game by 37 runs.
Earlier, RCB won the toss and opted to bat first. CSK bowlers bowled remarkably well to restrict Virat Kohli-led Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) to 169/4. Chennai bowlers were so good tonight that RCB could manage only 95 runs after the end of 15 overs and succeeded in sending half of the RCB batters back to the pavilion.
Skipper Kohli remained the key for fir his team to bat through the remaining overs and help them reach a respectable total.
Kohli hit his first six of the evening in the 18th over and with Dube scoring some quick runs from the other end, RCB looked in control. Virat Kohli and Shivam Dube smashed three sixes to Sam Curran over to get 24 runs from the 18th over. Dwayne Bravo bowled the last over and conceded 14 runs from it as RCB reached 169/4 in their allotted 20 overs.