THE chasing team continued their streak of winning full-length matches at the 2018 IPL, with Royal Challengers Bangalore collecting the two points on this occasion. Umesh Yadav’s three wickets in one over set the game up early, after which the South African duo of Quinton de Kock and AB de Villiers brushed aside a slight hiccup to take the hosts to a comfortable four-wicket win. RCB’s victory helped the franchise arrest their five-match losing streak at the Chinnaswamy.

At one point, it didn’t look easy for RCB, especially after they lost both Brendon McCullum and the captain Virat Kohli inside the Powerplay. But the 54-run partnership between de Kock and de Villiers did enough to take the pressure off the chase, after which Chris Woakes and Washington Sundar saw the team through to the win.
In the first innings, Kings XI made 155, but should’ve made more after a blazing start courtesy KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal. At the end of the match, the losing captain R Ashwin confessed that Kings XI was “twenty runs short”, and that – one could say – was the eventual difference between the two sides.

Despite the batsmen getting RCB across the line, it was their bowlers who set the game up. Umesh Yadav returned figures of 3 for 23, which included a triple-wicket over and was assisted by useful spells from Kulwant Khejroliya and Sundar.