Kolkata, Apr 23:
In a dramatic finish to the game, Royal Challengers Bangalore collapsed to 49, the lowest total in the history of IPL, as Kolkata Knight Riders savoured a 82-run victory, here tonight.
KKR pacers rattled the star-studded Royal Challengers Bangalore, who found themselves in complete disarray in the chase of a paltry 132.
In a shocking batting display, none of the Bangalore batsmen could reach the double digit mark with Kedar Jadahav’s nine being the highest.
The aggregate of RCB heavyweights — Virat Kohli (0), AB de Villiers (8) and Chris Gayle (7) — was 15 and that sort of explained the misery of the RCB.
It was an exceptional display of fast bowling by their two frontline pacers, Nathan Coulter-Nile (3/21) and Umesh Yadav (1/15), who bowled in tandem in the Powerplay overs and reduced them to 39/4 before Chris Woakes (3/6) choked the lower order.
It had rained a bit before the game began and the wicket had enough juice for KKR bowlers to exploit. The ball bounced and swung, making life difficult for the RCB batsmen.
Colin de Grandhomme (3/4) grabbed two in four balls as RCB continued their reckless batting to be skittled out in just 9.4 overs for the lowest ever total, eclipsing Rajasthan Royals’ 58 against them in Cape Town in 2009.
RCB’s previous low was 70 against Rajasthan Royals in 2014.
The Indian captain was guilty of poor shot selection as he chased a wide delivery off Coulter-Nile to edge it to Manish Pandey in second slip.
Kohli was seen annoyed with some movements at the sight- screen and he gestured to the fourth umpire immediately after returning to dug-out.
There was wicket in every over with Yadav dismissing Mandeep Singh (1) in the second over while de Villiers top- edged Coulter-Nile in the third over as the ball ballooned up in the sky before being caught by wicketkeeper Robin Uthappa.
Wickets kept tumbling and in no time, RCB had lost all its batsmen and KKR were celebrating a memorable win.
Earlier, Yuzvendra Chahal rocked the KKR middle order with a three-wicket burst as Bangalore bundled out the hosts for a modest 131.
Opting to bowl, Kohli was in for a shock as KKR’s new opener Sunil Narine hammered Samuel Badree for 18 runs in the opening over, hitting three fours and a six.
The next over, Gambhir had some tough time against Mills before using the Englishman’s pace to guide the ball over third-man boundary.
It was raining boundaries and sixes as KKR raced to 39 in three overs before Mills finally gave the breakthrough dismissing KKR skipper for 14 when the ball kissed Gambhir’s bottom-hand thumb and went to the wicketkeeper.
Narine though lived up to his new-found opening role pushing them to 65/2 in Powerplay but what unfolded next was a batting harakiri and the sellout Eden crowd switched loyalty Kohli and Co and kept chanting ‘RCB, RCB’.(PTI)
Narine slammed six boundaries and one six before holing out at deep square leg off Stuart Binny in the last over of Power Play.
Kohli introduced his ace spinner Chahal in the eighth over as the Haryana leggie bowled his quota at one go and rattled KKR who managed just 20 runs from 10 to 15 overs.
An alert Chahal quickly altered his line seeing Yusuf Pathan (8) stepping out for his first wicket and had him stumped while in the 12th over he struck twice to remove Manish Pandey (15) and Colin de Grandhomme (0).
The home team lost five wickets for 28 runs with Chahal making the difference in his 4-0-16-3 spell while Pawan Negi (2/15) and Tymal Mills (2/31) added to their misery.
Left-arm spinner Negi took wickets of Coulter Nile (2) and Suryakumar Yadav (15) in successive balls in the 18th over while Sreenath Aravind cleaned up Kuldeep Yadav (4) to bowl KKR out in 19.3 overs. (PTI)
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