Pant falters at last moment; RCB beat Delhi by 15 runs

Photo: AFP New Delhi: It was heartbreak for Rishabh Pant and Delhi Daredevils as Pawan Negi held his nerve to bowl an incredible last over to take Royal Challengers to a 15-run win in front of their home crowd in Bangalore. Rishabh Pant played one of his best innings of IPL as he almost single handedly took Delhi near RCB’s total. The 20 year old, who lost his father on Wednesday, could not take his side over the line and lost his leg stump to Negi in the last over but impressed one and all with his superb power hitting. Pant scored 57 off 36 balls laced with 4 sixes and 3 fours to fight a lone battle. All the other batsmen of the Daredevils fell flat in pursuit of a 158 run target set by RCB. The equation boiled to 32 runs off 18 balls with just 3 wickets in hand. Amit Mishra joined Pant in the middle but failed to provide the required assistance and pressure mounted on the young wicket-keeper batsman. For RCB, it was a combined bowling effort. Billy Stanlake started off well with raw pace and bounce. The Australian fast bowler got the all important wickets of Karun Nair (4) and Sanju Samson (13) to dent Delhi’s hopes. He was backed up by captain Shane Watson who returned with superb figures of 1 for 21 in 4 overs. Leg spinner Chahal made sure there were no freebies as he stifled the Delhi middle order. Earlier, it was Kedar Jadhav’s heroics with the bat that enabled RCB to reach 157.