While the injury to Reece Topley came as a bit of a blow to the Royal Challengers Bangalore in their first game against the Mumbai Indians, his replacement David Willey has raised his hand to suggest that the team need not worry. The left-arm pacer, much like Topley, was in sensational form in the ongoing match against Kolkata Knight Riders at the Eden Gardens Stadium in Kolkata.
Such was his accuracy with the ball that he managed to bowl a double-wicket maiden inside the powerplay, getting the wickets of Venkatesh Iyer and Mandeep Singh off successive balls. What was more impressive about those dismissals was that he managed to bowled both the batters, with the batters looking clueless against his deliveries.
The video of the same was shared by the IPL on its official social media handle:
Despite Willey's exemplary performance with the ball and his splendid figures of 2 for 16, Bangalore ended up conceding over 200 runs owing to some poor bowling at the death and some sensational batting performance from Shardul Thakur. The all-rounder scored the joint-fastest half-century of the season reaching to the landmark off 20 balls during his 29-ball 68 run knock in the match.
Notably, Kolkata were reduced to 89/5 in the 12th over with Willey's two wickets in two balls also followed by two wickets in two deliveries from leg-spinner Karn Sharma. However, the fact that Bangalore still conceded so many runs in a way hints how they were caught off guard when Shardul came with a counter-attacking mindset.
His innings comprised of 9 fours and 3 sixes and he got out only in the last over, long after he had brought his team back into the game with the bat.